`How The Irish Became White` by Noel Ignatiev

A critical analysis and review of `How The Irish Became White , by Noel Ignatiev

John Mitchel , a well known Irish American politician once wrote in one of the 1856 issues of Citizen : He would be a bad Irishman who voted for principles which jeopardized the present freedom of a nation of white men , for the vague forlorn hope of elevating blacks to a level for which it is at least problematical whether God and nature ever intended them ' From this excerpt , it is quite likely to assume that the oppressed Irish Catholics

who once crossed the Atlantic in their coffin ships to reach the New World in to escape the misery , famine and discrimination in their country had transformed to archetypal white men by then . In his exemplary book , How The Irish Became White , Noel Ignatiev analyzes this slow and painful assimilation of the Irish immigrants into the white American mainstream by critically observing the disturbing Irish question from the beginning of 19th century till late 1877 , and their long term struggle for the final acceptance into the brotherhood of white supremacy

The once oppressed Irish Catholics , who sought exile from the religious persecution and discrimination by the intolerant populace of Anglican faith for a better life in America , were by no means on higher grounds in their foster homeland , mercilessly rending their dreams in miserable dwellings and thankless labor by the very side of the equally subdued black people (Associated Content , 2008 ) The pain associated with the emigration...