Irish Assimilation Analysis

In today’s society, the Irish are seen as “White” Americans, but that was not always the case. Irish use to be seen as different and undesirable. Cartoons would depict them as ugly and very different from the superior white people, they were given the worst jobs, and had terrible housing. But they were able to climb up through war, sports, and politics to gain their whiteness. The Irish assimilation is best described through the structural vs. cultural assimilation. In 1830, the Irish were in deep poverty with low level of resources, exploitation and no social services such as health and education. This was mostly because of Ireland was under British control until 1921, under their control they were treated like a foreign colony and they had …show more content…
After cotton ships were delivered and emptied out, the ship would fill with Irish people and they were brought back to the docks where they were assured it was only a short walk to the big eastern cities (Zwonitzer, 1998). The Irish were arriving with little resources, poor, little or no education and with little to no skills. They also arrived with their cultural characteristics. They dressed in “odd clothing” before assimilating, they would stand out in crowds because of their long coats on men and long skirts on women. Also, they arrived speaking Gaelic and practicing catholic …show more content…
The Irish had a distinct pattern of immigration. They were arriving largely as single men and women. They also integrated lowly into the developing America, men were usually working as low wage laborers and women usually as domestics and textile workers (Pichardo, 2017). At this point, Irish were outsiders and sometimes even treated worse than African Americans who at the time were slaves. An example of this would be the types of jobs that were given to the Irish, they came with very few to no skills so they would take any jobs even if they were life threatening. In the “Diggers” pdf, it shows an example of the employment exploitation these men would go through, three men finished three rods for the Eerie canal in only 5 and a half days, in December weather, these workers only got paid $1.80 a day. Exploitation in coal mines also happened as well as child labor. Mine laborers would get cheated their pay by being told their carts were not all coal and therefore only got paid a part of what they should’ve been paid (Pichardo, 2017). The Irish would also be hired to drain swamps which would lead to malaria and often death, Slaves were not asked to do this because they were property and investments at the time, therefore the whites would rather have a replaceable Irish do that kind of work, since a new one could always be hired. Places hiring would also put signs up saying “No Irish Need Apply” this

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