"The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Cen...

Today we chat with Patrick R. O'Malley about his new book ⁠The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (www.upress.vir...)

[@yesidothinkso2411]

In the American context they were considered White. That's why they were able to be citizens. "White men of good character" was the law for who could gain citizenship.

[@davidh6543]

I don't think anybody in their right mind can equate the awful plight of black people in America to the discrimination the Irish endured, two different things.
To go off on a tangent, two other very different things that are always glossed over in talks like this are the native (Catholic) Irish, and the so-called 'scotch-Irish' or ulster Scots, who were not Irish at all. Two different animals, don't conflate the two.
47:00 when he talks about impoverished people of Irish descent in the slave owning states, those are mostly Ulster Scots presbyterian migrants from the planted north of Ireland, of Scots/English descent. There was no significant ((native) Irish presence in the US until the Famine hit. They had little or no agency until after emancipation.
As an Irish person, I don't want to be lumped in with planters and Anglo-IIrish aristos just to make the narrative easier. Didn't appreciate the constant references to pints of Guinness either, speaking of stereotypes.

[@pericadomestos3108]

lol