- In 1798, Congress passed three “Alien Acts” based mainly on fears of Irish-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment. These new laws gave the president the power to stop immigration from any country at war with the U.S. and the right to deport any immigrant, and made it harder for immigrants to vote. Then, again in the late 1840s, a nationalist political group called the Know-Nothings sprang from a populist movement of poor whites who were dissatisfied with the two-party system and started the American Party, intent on preserving America’s culture by restricting immigration, especially from Catholic countries—including by Irish Catholics. They managed to get candidates elected into the highest political offices in America, including a president.
They just did it. picardfacepalm.jpg There's an even simpler explanation: The Germans came. Then the Poles. Then the Italians. Then the Chinese. Those dirty immigrants? They may be taking your job but your kids are also playing with their kids. Then they're going to grow up and bitch about someone else taking their jobs. All immigrants must be treated like absolute dogshit for one generation. Those are the rules worldwide. Kids born there get to be pissy about how their parents were mistreated but are generally orders of magnitude better off. Their kids? Those are full-fledged citizens. The trick is in who chooses your identity - yourself or the neighborhood. if you get to identify as a Chinese-American, you win. If your neighborhood identifies you as Chinese in America you lose. Blacks are fucked under this system because few of them chose to immigrate, therefore their second-class status has been semi-perpetual. This is one reason why modern blacks favor better in the Commonwealth, although it isn't all wine and roses. Jews also fare poorly because they integrate less than other ethnic groups.But there is a simpler, less complex explanation for how this country eventually came to view the Irish as regular, good, American white people:
How about we, as a humans, decide to stop being assholes to the new guy in town? Maybe we can be intolerant bastards to the jackoffs that have no sense of the history of the crazy terrible stuff that we humans have convinced ourselves was at one time righteous. I know I've got plenty that I can do better.
It's a lovely thought. It truly is. As a student of history, allow me to point out that compared to how we were even a few decades ago we're kicking ass? And that a few decades ago rips ass over a hundred years ago? And a hundred years ago rips ass on two hundred years ago? The thing is, people who don't care don't make the news. Thing is? That's a dickish sign. It should be remembered. But all the signs that don't say "irish need not apply" are forgotten because they were irrelevant. It's the loudmouth with an opinion we all notice, not the folks that couldn't care less where you're from and it's getting harder to be a loudmouth. ...well it was until November. However I see this as a temporary hiccup on a long arc towards general tolerance. And no matter how you look at it, the longer you've lived somewhere the likelier you are to have friends there to stick up for you.
Is likelier the right way of saying that? Wouldn't it be "more likely?" You ever have those moments when you can't remember how to spell a simple word, or use a phrase and your brain is wrestling with itself over it? I'm having that moment, right now, with "likelier."
I accidentally took an upper level sociology course once, and we used this book. That class fucked me up, it was great. It was like jumping in the snow when you've been in a hot tub of bullshit your entire life. Might as well have made Manifest Destiny the name of my high school mascot.