IRISH FORGOT THEIR OPPRESSION

When Irish immigrants began arriving in the United States in large numbers, they were given the worst and most dangerous jobs, often laboring on canals, railroads, and docks for meager wages. Crowded into urban slums alongside free Blacks, they lived in conditions marked by poverty, crime, and disease.

The Irish had fled brutal conditions in their homeland, where British landlordism and the Penal Laws had rendered them nearly as powerless as enslaved Africans. Irish Catholics were legally and socially degraded, with officials even claiming they did not legally exist. Given this shared experience of racial and class oppression, it might be expected that Irish immigrants would empathize with the enslaved Black people . Yet, as Irish socialist and political activist Bernadette Devlin describes, many Irish chose to align with whiteness, opposing abolition and participating in violent attacks on Black communities to protect their own economic interests.

This alignment with white supremacy helped the Irish gain access to jobs and political power, but at the cost of solidarity. While some today cite Irish success as proof that all groups can “make it,” such comparisons ignore the racial privileges the Irish were ultimately allowed to access. As former US president Lyndon Johnson put it, “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket.”
Credit : WBHG TV