Oh wow, I find this take on why a Black Annie is important, relevant & fits w/the narrative to be super interesting! pic.twitter.com/Ir0iMJBmvx
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) January 9, 2015
Via Jamelle Bouie’s twitter feed. I know that the Irish were still considered violent, ignorant sub-humans well into the twentieth century, but I don’t know enough about Harold Grey’s mileu to be sure…
aimai
Fascinating and so very right.
Kropadope
“Interesting” might not adequately describe racial imbalances in adoption.
scav
Does sound like a charitable interpretation all that same. Doesn’t quite seem to fit with the rest of his ethos (although oddities do get shoehorned in). Daddy Warbucks being a positive moral touchstone might provide an initial clue.
aimai
@aimai: After reading the wiki on the writer I think the theory that Annie “should” be black or “was” Irish is pretty far off base, historically speaking, but still very right conceptually.
The story as it has now developed can/should definitely take an “outcast” as its heroine but I don’t think the originator had much in mind.
Amir Khalid
Funny, the rather long Wikipedia article about Little Orphan Annie makes no mention of her being Irish-American. Or unadoptable, since Daddy Warbucks did love her and wanted to adopt her.
It’s interesting, though, that Harold Grey’s politics are described as conservative and libertarian, opposed to FDR, to trade unions and to the New Deal. And those politics were reflected in Little Orphan Annie storylines. The Balloon Juice crowd would not have liked him.
The Pale Scot
We’ll give some land to the n•••••••s and the ch••••s, but we won’t take the Irish!
Aww prairie shit.
Edited for grammer
NotMax
Harold Gray the person was a piece of work, a vile one. Racist, anti-semitic, elitist, jingoist and practitioner of a host of other extreme righr wing -isms.
I notice the Wikipedia article you linked now softpedals Daddy Warbucks’ death in the strip to no longer make it clear that Gray had the character commit suicide over FDR’s reelection, and that the resurrection happened only after FDR was himself dead in real life.
Bob In Portland
Which way is the crowd running? Cui bono?
There was a story the other day about how the CIA trained six eventual hijackers. What a coincidence!
Who benefits from the Charlie Hebdo shooting?
Who benefited from the Beltway Snipers?
It’s another concept that is hard to accept, that people would steer other people to do horrible things for profit. You know, because good people wouldn’t do bad things.
Tree With Water
My heritage is primarily Irish- I guess, and I guess because I really don’t care.* I was 10 years old when the grandfather of a couple of my friends angrily spitted out “The Irish are white niggers”. I mean, he meant it. His wife instantly turned on him in horror- doubtless because of my presence, as she’s certainly heard it before. He was a beautiful guy, too, to all the children especially in the neighborhood, and my memories of him will always remain fond. But I never looked at him the same way again.
* “Don’t care where your from, or where your going,
All I know is that you came”….. John Lennon
NotMax
@Bob in Portland
Hodor!
Mike J
The meat of the argument (the part written by Boyd) was obviously not posted on twitter since it is too long. It’s a pity nobody just linked to where ever it was posted so we could read actual text instead of a horrible small picture of text.
We used to have another word for pictures of text. Faxes. They went away because they suck ass.
The twit version of this offers no link to the original author. That’s bad for the author, and bad for the end users. You can’t copy and paste any of the text. Screen readers can’t read graphics.
Please, let fax die.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Sigh. Why don’t you join the dots and then show us the picture? I’m sure your insights will impress and enlighten all of us.
Comrade Dread
But I can still hate it because I hate most musicals, right?
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: HODOR, I say! HODOR!
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Dread: Well, on the basis of it being a musical, sure!
Kropadope
@Comrade Dread: Annie isn’t just any musical. Just kiddin, but I don’t like musicals either, but Annie is one of the few that I’ve grown fond of. I like most things Disney, but I put that in its own category. Though most musicals I like resemble Disney more in structure than les miserable, for example, which seems almost closer to opera.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland:
Good people like Vlad Putin?
raven
The bookbook by Ikea.
Amir Khalid
I’m intrigued that there’s a ghost town in California named Mount Ophir, after a mountain in Malaysia. I presume it has something to do with the story of Puteri Gunung Ledang (the Princess of Mount Ophir). I hadn’t been aware that the story had got as far as the US.
raven
@Amir Khalid: It was in a bookbook.
Keith G
So, is Alexandra K Boyde just making shit up? She implies explicit knowledge of the character’s origin story, but provides no sourcing.
Maybe: Not true so not interesting.
Bob In Portland
@NotMax: Thank you for proving the edge of your understanding.
Who benefits from the Charlie Hebdo shootings? Certainly not Charlie Hebdo. Definitely not the 99.9999% of Muslims who don’t commit terrorist acts.
The older Tsarnaev brother attended a conference held by the Jamestown Foundation. The younger one was tutored by a guy who worked for the CIA. The boys’ uncle was running a support group for Chechens out of his father-in-law’s address. Graham Fuller.
We can argue about what is or isn’t a false flag, but your inability to acknowledge the people always in the periphery of these crimes is an admission of your intellectual cowardice.
raven
Fucking jury duty AGAIN!!!!!
raven
@Bob In Portland: I acknowledge that you are a fucking dust mite.
NotMax
@Bob in Portland
Hodor²!
Violet
@Mike J:
In the medical world and health insurance world every fucking thing has to be faxed. No email attachment, certainly no texting or other more current methodology. Fax only. Or you can snail mail it. Yay.
@raven: I feel for you. I had it twice last year. Different courts.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: You’re at least two days late. This was on lifenews.ru on Thursday.
PurpleGirl
@raven: I feel sorry for you. How long has it been since your jury duty call?
Last spring I was called for jury duty and ended up in voir dire for one case. That one day meant I’m now done with jury duty for another 6 years. There are enough people in Queens County to serve that they only need us every 6 years.
raven
@Violet: I always get on when I get called. The rape was the worst but I’ve been on shootings and some other lesser stuff.
my bride was an alternate and they make them sit in an empty room with no reading materials. She was in there
for 3 days.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
The Ophirs in California are both named after a land of treasure mentioned in the Bible. As the same place is named in other Middle-Eastern, including Arabic, legends, I imagine your Ophir got its name in similar fashion.
raven
@PurpleGirl: 2 years I think, an MD was suing a hospital/orthopod after her mom died. It seemed like total bullshit and we sat there for a couple of days and then they just said “ok, bye”.
Violet
@raven:
Those sound like some tough cases. I hope you get off this time.
I got to voir dire on the second one and told them I I was skeptical that cops were telling the truth or something like that–can’t remember the exact question. Whatever it was, I left them with the impression that I might think the cops were lying. I didn’t get on the jury.
Violet
@raven:
What a nightmare. That would be worse than being on the jury. Why couldn’t they read old People magazines or a novel or something unrelated to the case?
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Jeez, I haven’t been called in over 20 years.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
Dang. I didn’t know about those other Ophirs. But as I mentioned, we cal our mountain Ledang. it was the Brits who named it Mount Ophir.
jibeaux
Speaking of Irish, you ladies should watch Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders on the Netflix. I’d adopt him any day, rawr.
Violet
@raven: One time I got on the panel, we got into the courtroom, they started voir dire and after about fifteen minutes the lawyers asked for recess. The judge told us to take a half hour break. When we re-convened we were told the defendant took a look at us and decided to let the judge decide rather than have a jury trial and we were free to go. We were scary!
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Ophir was almost certainly named after the place-name in the Bible, supposedly a region of abundant riches. The “gold of Ophir” is mentioned several places in the Old Testament. The town was founded in 1851, in the middle of the California Gold Rush, and the name was changed to Mount Ophir in 1856, “most likely [. . .] to avoid confusion with the mining camp of the same name near Auburn in Placer County.”
America is awash in place-names from the Bible. Other popular categories are mangled Indian words and first white guy to arrive and name the place after himself or a loved one.
ETA: And what Cervantes said.
Lavocat
Or, to put it in the words of one of my long-dead uncles: “The Blacks and the Irish are cousins of a sort. The former are the n-s of Africa, while the Irish are the n-s of Europe.” In unclespeak that was a commiseration between the lowest rungs on the totem pole in American culture. And, sadly, it now seems that the Muslims are the n-s of Asia.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Right, so yours and the ones in California are named not after each other but all after the same legendary treasure lands — probably.
I could check, but not right now.
Shalimar
@Bob In Portland: There are those who think the CIA are good people? Where does one find these crazy dreamers? Does the CIA pay them to think this?
Your straw-man is in a big pile by the side of the road. You should actually go to the effort of making it look human before trying to scare the crows.
NotMax
@jibeaux
Was impressed by his acting chops in Breakfast On Pluto.
Switching gears, a Republican Congress’ wet dream looming on the horizon. (Perhaps Mr. Mayhew can address this in a post.)
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: Are you allowed to email the fax image?
Are you allowed to send computer originated faxes?
Lololol.
Another Holocene Human
Because nobody could like, fake a fax. Faxes are like teleportation!
raven
@Violet: I mean I wouldn’t pick me but THEY do. When we gave the guy life + 150 for the rape he didn’t bat an eye. Three hots and a cot.
Violet
@Lavocat:
And then there are women.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: They must profile you as a cranky conservative. I told the judge in voir dire that I can’t take plea bargain testimony as anything other than bought and paid for in a drug case. If that wasn’t enough I would have told the judge I don’t believe in federal drug prosecutions … but I think I was already out because I knew one of the witnesses.
I think I would try to lay low and get in on a rape case just to make sure the fucker went to prison … of course it seems like ever other rape conviction is a racial fix up job. Then it would be my duty to make the jury hang. I’d never get seated, though. They ask you intrusive enough questions to determine if you’re a sexual minority during voir dire. Bet that’s an off the jury, no question. We’re all leftist revolutionaries, you get your card with your copy of the gay agenda.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
No; and mostly yes.
Violet
@Another Holocene Human: Don’t understand what you’re saying. Not everything can be faxed easily and not everyone has access to online faxing unless they use one of those free services (not really secure) or pay for one of them (expensive monthly fee for occasional use).
@raven: I hope you get out of it this time. See if you can fit in the “I don’t trust cops” attitude and maybe you’ll get off.
The panel I got on during my most recent jury duty, one of the guys knew one of the lawyers. They didn’t pick him for the panel.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Bookbook tech support.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: This one was fucking ugly, the victim knew the guy and her little kids opened the screen door for him to get in. They put the tykes on the stand and it was awful. I will say that the “similar transaction” testimony of a couple of other victims did influence us. My lawyer friends don’t like that at all but after the trial I learned he’d already done 7 years for beating one of his victims half to death I didn’t give a shit.
raven
@Violet: Nah, I don’t play that. I shoot straight and that means I get picked I guess. I also know lawyers in the DA and Public Defender office and that’s never gotten me anywhere but in the box.
Bobby Thomson
@Bob In Portland: I see the check cleared.
Tommy
Go Ravens!
raven
NOW it’s timely to whine about football!
Bobby Thomson
@Violet:
I think he’s mocking the fax-only rule by pointing out that anyone who can send an email can also send a fax using exactly the same technology. The people who think that faxes are somehow secure and emails aren’t are idiots, but they run our healthcare system.
raven
@Steeplejack: Yes!
PurpleGirl
I was in voir dire for a slip-n-fall case against a supermarket. I got excused from that panel not because I was working as a paralegal at the time but because I mentioned I had worked for a legal publisher as a copyeditor (Matthew Bender) and had worked on evidence books. The judge took the responsibility for excusing me so that it didn’t count against either of the parties in the suit. I knew it was important to mention that work history as more meaningful than my paralegal work in electricity contracts.
Tommy
How do “traditional” commercial printers make money these days? I started out in advertising/marketing before the first web browser was out. There were no digital presses. Now I always had a print production department to handle, well my clients printing and we still printed a ton of stuff into the early 90s (then I started to work for myself). But I was always fascinated by the entire process, and anytime I could go on a press check I did.
I just ordered 500 business cards for myself. 16 pt matte stock.UV coating. Four color both sides. And they will actually be printed, or “ganged” printed, on a real press, because I don’t like the “feel” of digital presses.
With shipping they were $32.98.
It has been ages since I ordered anything printed on you know, actual paper. Everything is digital in my world. But I went looking around the site after I placed the order at other printing costs, for like postcards, letterhead, and brochures. The prices were do dirt cheap I can’t see, as I started off this post saying, how they are making money.
I guess volume is the only thing that saves them …..
Anne Laurie
@Tommy: Thanks, you just alerted me to put up a new thread up top!
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: Yes, they are saved by volume printing. The non-profit I worked for had several printers and a photocopier. But some of things we did were in large quantities which we couldn’t really handle in the office. Let’s say 200 copies we’d do in-house but the 10,000 copy items we’d send to a printer.
Booger
“Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud.”
Cervantes
@raven:
And ethics?
Nick
I don’t care who plays Annie, but it’s just hogwash that in the early 20th century the Irish weren’t considered ‘white’. Ref?
wasabi gasp
@NotMax:
This kinda blew me away. A quick search didn’t bring much up, except for the following page in which reads, suicide might be stretching it, but only by the tiniest of bits.
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/09/09/comic-book-legends-revealed-331/
Violet
@raven: I was being honest about the question they asked. I think they asked us if we’d ever had an experience where we were distrustful off law enforcement or something like that. I certainly have. They followed up with me and asked another question of me. Can’t remember it exactly but I think I left them with the impression that I was skeptical of cops’ honesty.
I hope you don’t even get on a jury pool. Best of luck.
Mnemosyne
@Nick:
There’s a whole book about it. Keep in mind, in the early 20th century, pretty much the only people considered truly “white” were British and German. Scandinavians might qualify, but certainly not the French or Spanish.
ETA: Here’s another along the same lines: Whiteness of A Different Color
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
I expect he was questioning the timing rather than the concept as a whole.
Anne Laurie
@Nick: “No Irish Need Apply” signs in NYC when my grandfather emigrated from Galway in the mid-1920s.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
It’s not clear that it’s named after the mountain in Malaysia. Ophir was a famous source of much of King Solomon’s gold, so it’s a logical name for a gold mining town. It sounds as if Mt. Ophir was originally just called Ophir, but was renamed because of confusion with another town of the same name.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: And with metaphysical certainty not the Italians.
Which asswipes like Tancredo, Scalia, Arapaio, and Alito have conveniently forgotten.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Mnemosyne:
Okay, I call bullshit. The olive-skinned Mediterraneans might have been a little suspect, but show me where the French, hated rivals though they might be, weren’t considered white. Can you pull a quote from one of those books?
Nick
“No Irish need apply” is not the same as falling outside the category of ‘whiteness’.
If they weren’t considered ‘white’, then what were they considered? Black? American Indian? Oriental?
Nick
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Yep, I totally agree. James Monroe’s family was half French — are you trying to argue that he would have been considered a biracial president?
Nick
Here is Wikipedia’s description of Teddy Roosevelt’s family:
His father was of half Dutch[6] and half English/Irish/Welsh descent while his mother had Scottish, English, and French ancestry.
Does anyone really think that a few of those — Irish, Welsh, French — were considered the same as having black relatives in the family?
mike in dc
@Bob In Portland:
Ironically, most of the internet conspiracy sorts who use the term “false flag” tend to be the most anti-Semitic people on the planet.
The most successful conspiracies are “open” conspiracies. Anything that requires more than 3 people to keep a secret is going to get found out eventually. Which is why 90% of the stuff you suggest here is dubious.
Steeplejack
@Nick:
This. I don’t doubt the Irish faced brutal discrimination, but that’s not prima facie proof of racism.
Note that in the 19th and early 20th century the word race was often used as a synonym for nationality. Take, as one example, Erskine Childers’s proto-thriller The Riddle of the Sands (1903):
Also:
[English narrator speaking of English comrade:] Our eyes met for a second, in which all was said that need be said, as between two of our phlegmatic race.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack (tablet):
It depends on who you talked to. Not surprisingly, each country believed that they were the summit of peak whiteness. So I’m probably taking more of an Anglo-American slant on the whole thing. As far as the French were concerned, they themselves were the pinnacle of evolution and the English were tainted with Celtic characteristics. Etc.
@Nick:
There’s a reason we’re specifically discussing the late 19th to early 20th centuries. In James Monroe’s time, black people weren’t quite “black” yet, and the “one drop rule” didn’t exist. Our modern (as in 20th century) concepts of race didn’t exist in Monroe’s time.
Short version, a lot of people in the late 19th/early 20th century timeframe took Darwin’s theories and misapplied them in horrific ways, like eugenics. That was when a lot of our current theories about race were formed and a lot of “science” was misapplied to prove who was or was not evolutionarily superior. All of which would have completely horrified Darwin himself, of course.
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
Fair enough about the time frame, I thought of that too afterwards . . . I think Steeplejack hits the nail on the head, though, with how ‘race’ was used in a broader way back then, and it’s also important to realize that gets mixed up with anti-Catholicism as well. That applied to the Irish, of course — but many of our presidents were Ulster Irish, and I really doubt that they were considered a separate ‘race’ from the Catholic Irish, in the modern sense.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Right, that’s part of the problem with discussing it — it was in the early 20th century that our currently most prevalent (but being re-examined) concept of “race” was being formed, so it’s not quite as simple as saying “X was considered white, but Y was not,” because the concept of “white” was still in flux.
Add in the Catholic/Protestant divide to the developing concept of “whiteness,” and it gets really interesting. I have a book on my reading list called The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction. It’s a true story about a group of Irish Catholic orphans who were brought to Arizona for adoption by Mexican Catholic families because they were unadoptable in New York for not being quite white enough, but the white settlers in Arizona thought they looked plenty white enough, so they kidnapped them from their adoptive families. But a huge part of that equation is that they weren’t quite considered “white” due to religion, not skin color.
Short version: the story of the construction of “whiteness” in the United States is really, really complicated.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack: Concepts of “race” have evolved over the decades. There was a time when people spoke of a “French Race”, a “German Race”, a “Polish Race” ad nauseum. That was only a century or so back. It’s morphed since then, of course, to basically three: the white, the black, the yellow, with a few others like the red easily forgotten as an offshoot of the yellow. Australian Aborigines aren’t related to Africans, but they’re dark enough to qualify as “not white”. Same for Melanesians.
The Nazis made all sorts of distinctions among white skinned people. “White” is a convenient word in this country to mean “the privileged ethnicity” which was once much narrower than it is now. The Irish and the Italians have come a long way in the last century. There are still WASP types who make distinctions that the mainstream has long since forgotten.
Steeplejack
@Villago Delenda Est:
Whatever the nuances of ethnic and class privilege, I think it is a mistake to retroactively claim that because people spoke or wrote about the “German race” or the “Irish race” or whatever 100 years ago that automatically means that they meant those groups weren’t white.
mike in dc
@Steeplejack:
I don’t think that WASPs thought of them as not “white”, just inferior in some way or another(culturally inferior, less intelligent, less hard-working, etc.). Sort of a hybrid of race and class biases.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Steeplejack:
And yet, in the time period we’re talking about, the concept that every European nationality could be lumped into the same group under the rubric of “white” would have seemed absurd. It took years for that to develop.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Mayflower descendant vs Winthrop fleet descendant? Mayflower/Winthrop descendant vs Great Migration descendant? That kind of thing?
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Does the phrase “white man’s burden” ring a bell? Kipling, 1899. It’s pretty clear in the poem he’s talking about all the white (colonial) powers (including America), not just whitey-white England.
“Not white” means “fluttered folk and wild— / Your new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child.” “Heathen.” Not your pesky Germans or Irish or French.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack:
Even the Belgians?
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Steeplejack:
You might want to review your history of Ireland before you decide Kipling’s words wouldn’t have applied to them. They were the original English colony, the one they practiced on before colonizing worldwide.
As I said, it was a concept that was still in flux. Kipling’s poem is one of the early examples of lumping Europeans in together as a single “white” race, but your other example from a few years later shows people still using “race” interchangeably with “nationality.” There were many, many more gradations of race than we have now.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Steeplejack:
Also, too, I should say that I think the bit quoted in the tweet stretches the “Irish people weren’t really white!” to the breaking point. To me, the answer to the question of why they should make a remake of “Annie” with a black leads is “why not”? It doesn’t require a tortured justification linking the character of Annie to historical treatment of Irish-Americans. She was probably a redhead because it stood out on the page when printed in color.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nobody likes the Belgians.
Interesting that Heart of Darkness came out the same year, 1899.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
I agree with this. I would say past the breaking point.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Exactly.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Cervantes:
I tried to change it to “leads” since Daddy Warbucks is probably the co-lead, but the iPad doesn’t let me edit. :-(
Woodrowfan
ever see the old comic “Bringing Up Father”? It was about an Irish family who get rich suddenly and how the father, Jiggs, just wanted to be able to enjoy his traditional Irish food and drink, but ran afoul of his wife, Maggie, who wanted to be accepted in more stylish society, which rejected things which were too “Irish”.
Lavocat
@Violet: Quite right.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
Editing works fine on my iPad — but that could be because I’m not paying attention.
Cervantes
@Woodrowfan:
Corned beef and cabbage.
Nutella
@Mnemosyne:
I have read The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction and its description of the construction of race in one small mining town is fascinating.
Originally the town was populated solely by people of Mexican descent so any class divisions were economic, dividing the school teachers and mining engineers from the laborers.
Then the Americans came to town, that is, people from the eastern parts of the US including recent immigrants. These people considered themselves white and the original inhabitants, no matter their economic class, to be poor and low class Mexicans.
Some of the whites were Catholics but they never attended services at the local Catholic church because they wouldn’t have anything to do with Mexicans. One of the whites was actually black, that is, of African descent but since he clearly was not Mexican was considered to be white.
It’s a very interesting book! Race is a social construct that changes depending on social conditions. We tend to think race is a thing that exists as we have always understood it but it’s just our current categorization based on current needs to divide people into groups.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Not Finns, though. Finns and Estonians worked in the mines and in logging camps. They were really out the outside looking in because of politics, language, and usually coming to the States with little education. It’s different now, of course.
Scandinavians were looked at much differently in the 19th century when it was a region of grinding poverty as opposed to post WWII when they achieved the highest standards of living in the world. Suddenly Swedes were hot.
Another Holocene Human
@Anne Laurie: Don’t forget, it wasn’t just the ethnicity, it was the religion, too.
Everything they say about Muslims now, good New Englanders were saying about Catholics, that is Papists, throughout the 19th century. They didn’t know how to do democracy, all of their countries were tyrannies and violent and oppressive, they would outbreed the “normal” Protestant families and install the Pope as their ruler, blah blah blah.
Another Holocene Human
@Steeplejack (tablet): Depends which French you’re talking about and what part of the country. It’s attributed all over, heck, just read about the Mike Michaud versus LePage gubernatorial race and they were talking about the status of French Canadians in Maine during much of the 20th century.
French Canadians/Acadians/Cajuns were very much looked down upon and discriminated against. However, in the rural Midwest it was no knock on anybody to be part French. Again, there’s a big difference in how refugee populations are looked at versus wealthier groups. Lafayette would not have been looked down upon.
By the time the Cajuns made it to Louisiana there was definitely an odor of not-white around them. And given how racist Louisiana is these days it makes for some bizarre politics. For years, after the white Creoles had whitewashed their backgrounds, Cajuns would claim they were Creoles because being a Cajun was really low down and contemptible, but now that there’s a lot out there about Creoles being mixed race everyone’s running to claim they’re a Cajun instead. When English-speakers first moved into New Orleans they were literally called “The Americans” and they didn’t mix–at all–with either French-speaking population. Eventually they gained in numbers and seized political power.
Another Holocene Human
@Steeplejack: That is absolutely not the basis of the claim. I suggest you dig deeper into the literature and the history of it. We’re talking about a period of time when some sources literally speak of the Irish as “White Negroes”.
I think a good analogy is not the contemporary status of African Americans but the FOX News hysteria about Mexican Muslim terror babies. This is approximately how Irish Catholics were perceived by Northeastern US WASPs and for a lot of the same reasons.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Not quite right, but they did actually divide white Europeans anthropologically into different skull shapes (the Nazis were fucking obsessed with this as well) and attributed all sorts of moral and intellectual qualities to skull shape. There were authors who claimed that Scots were the flower of humanity and other kinds of Europeans were mongrel dogs because reasons. For one example.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: First Families of Virginia!
If you want to be a real, uber WASP you gotta have that one colonial period Indian “princess” in your family tree.
Don’t have a real one, make one up!
Another Holocene Human
@Steeplejack: Dude. Ireland was a British colony.
TerryC
@Nick: In my home town in the Ohio River Valley the prejudice against Irish or Catholic was quite strong. But, even as a child in the 1950s, I understood that it had been much worse in earlier decades.
EthylEster
What does this mean? What does “itself” refer to? What does “which” refer to?
I am sooo tired of writers who cannot write clearly.
Jebediah, RBG
@Steeplejack (tablet):
But everybody loves their waffles!