If you missed it, there is the beginning of an interesting discussion in the comments of yesterday's blog posting "Good And Bad". As St.Patrick's Day season begins, we're going to be bombarded with stereotypical images of the Irish, as well as our own neighbors parading or partying decked out in the green tinsel wigs, huge leprechaun hats and other such shamrockery that I mentioned yesterday. Some of you have strong feelings that such "cartooning" of the Irish people and culture is highly insulting and offensive. Some of you think it's all in good fun. Irish Fest heritage area coordinator Barbara Scanlon, one of the former, sent along this 19th century political cartoon to illustrate that the Irish-as-monkeys image, recently reinterpreted in a
fast food commercial, has a long historical precedent.
So there's the question: does it bother you? The "saving o' the green" pitchmen on the radio with the phony accents? The jigging chimps? The drunken Paddy stereotype and the grown men in leprechaun suits? The Notre Dame mascot? Is it any better when it's an inside job, i.e. a person of Irish descent or birth who's doing the broad-brush painting? Is Oirish a crime? I'm interested to know what you think.
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26 comments:
Well....you KINDA look like a monkey yourself. But it could just be a Regan thing.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
I am offended. By the Fast Food Adv, my darling daughters were Irish dancers and let me tell ya they do not resemble monkeys, they are very intellegent and are also very troubled by the use of monkeys as Irish dancers. Green goofy hats and the like... and the behavior of my freinds and myself in March is stretching in and deserving of a smack down. Mrs. Scanlon has shared some rather troubling history and may make my St. Patrick's day a wee bit more conservative. Thank you for putting this out for discussion. I would like to see other comments.
I don't like the caricatures & stereotypes because I think they sometimes affect our Fest. People who aren't familiar are hesitant to support - as in sponsor - an event that they see as a big drunken party. It can be a hard sell convincing them that its a family thing, a music & cultural thing first & foremost. Other than that, from a historical perspective, all these things kinda tell us where we came from & what our ancestors had to rise above so I think in that regard they have some value! The fact that certain colors, accents, characteristics still signify "Irish" means that we've never truly completely "melted" into the melting pot - we're special! So like you said - both good & bad!
Are you kidding me?! Who among you has not at some point worn some stupid green item or after a few beers (maybe even green beer) spoken with a fake and probably bad Irish accent? I find these comments to be hypocritical and somewhat snobbish. Just because people choose to buy in to the Americanized form of celebrating all things Irish does not mean they are mocking the struggles of Irish immigrants and ancestors. Give me a break! Doesn't the Irish Fest itself have a leprechaun with a huge green felt head walking around handing out balloons? I am so sick of this holier than thou and perhaps "Irisher than thou" attitude. Get over it!
My two cents worth:
Cent One. I'm not easily, if ever, offended, but I do have an abnormally low stupidity tolerance. Regardless of what they're celebrating or which ethnic group they're "honoring", when I see people who dress and act like idiots, I tend to think of them as idiots. But harmless idiots, usually and seldom offensive. As far as the stuff I originally mentioned, the "McGoggle's" and "O'Drinky's" products and their ilk, my problem with them isn't that they're offensive, it's that they're unimaginative, unoriginal and not funny. Years ago I did a St. Pat's Day card at work that had a cartoon of a little, sterotypical leprechaun in a barber shop up on a step-ladder with scissors and a bow drier, giving a horrified-looking woman a big shamrock shaped hair-do. The caption said "When Irish Guys Are Styling." Offensive? Probably. Funny? I thought so, even if I did write it.
Cent Two. You can never, NEVER go wrong with dancing monkeys.
right on, Danny!
Uh, I meant blow drier. Not bow drier. It's not funny with a bow drier.
Wait a minute. Ed Scanlon, who danced around in green shiny underwear dressed up as the patron saint of Ireland in last year's parade, is offended by monkeys doing a jig on a TV commercial? Pot, meet kettle.
After a discussion at work today about the "light skinned Italians" vs the "dark skinned Italians" it made stop and think why do people think these things?
When someone starts in about the Irish and their drinking I quickly tell them that's not the biggest addiction in Ireland it's gambling.
So what if one day a year, some idiots are like fools, with green hair and such I'm not going to let that rain on my parade!
I too have daughters that have danced and we actully are quite impressed with the perfection of the steps of these so called monkeys which happen to be the footwork of a prestigious Midwest dance school.
Get a grip, lifes just too short!
P S I love it when ol uncle bloggy opens up a can of worms!
Gotta find something to do on these cold snowy nights.
Have to get in on this (good) discussion at least once.
Another ice storm in progress here.
Oh well.
Starting with the cartoon on the original post...
Notice that is says "Irish Dynamiters" at the bottom.
There WAS such a group but the actual story is not funny at all.
That story alone is revealing of the actual times and the attitudes behind the cartoons.
When the Irish first started working on the Railroad boom of the mid-1800's one of the jobs they would always be assigned is to be the ones to go into the tunnels in progress and set all the dyanmite charges. Prior to the Irish being available this would be the job assigned to negroes ( Is it OK to say negro? I have lost track of what is permissible for that ethnic group ). When there were any Irish around they were used because the negro workers were considered to be "more valuable" than the Irish. The Irish were the low of the low, supposedly, and totally expendable.
And boy did they expend them.
There were many horrible incidents in that dangerous line of work but there always seemed to be more Irish to just send in the tunnel again.
As for all the other denigrating cartoons and newspaper articles and short stories from that period... everyone now knows exactly what was really happening. It was an actual "marketing effort" on the part of the more-established "early Irish" to disassociate themselves from the famine Irish flooding into the country. That's old news.
No mystery. It's all about money, anyway. The established Irish just didn't want to lose any business.
I saw the same thing happen in 'real-time' when I was growing up in Miami... but on a compressed timeframe.
The Cubans who were lucky enough to escape from Castro with their lives as he came to power fled to Miami. They established themselves there and were successful and were now part of the fabric of the South Florida community.
Then, in the mid 1960's, President Kennedy decided to start the Cuban Airlift and just let anyone who wanted out of Cuba come to Miami at US taxpayer's expense. So of course THOUSANDS of 'new Cubans' came. This all culminated in the Mariel Boatlift when Castro opened up the prisons and the asylums in Cuba and then he, himself, paid for them to make it across the straights to Miami.
Well... the ORIGINAL Cuban (political) refugees had the same reaction as the early Irish in this country did to the famine influx. They were already established ( and making money ) in Miami and they did NOT want to be associated with all these "poorer" Cubans now pouring into Miami.
So the answer was "marketing". They took out ads in papers, they drew cartoons, they spoke at meetings and on television. They extended a helping hand while at the same time put a 'distance' between themselves and their fellow countrymen that would be sure to not affect their own hard-gained social/economic status in "the new land".
It worked ( again ).
They even repeated the old New York 5-points scenario and 'decided' where it would be best for all the new 'refugees' to live ( As in: Not where they lived ). It was a derelict area in Miami next to Liberty City ( the negro area ) called "8th Street".
So I didn't need the History books to understand what happened to the Irish coming into this country in the mid-1800's. I saw the whole thing repeat itself all around me with another ethnic group while
I was growing up.
It all culminated in Miami in the Liberty City riots of the 1970's when the South Florida negro community erupted into violence. Liberty City had become more and more of a ghetto the larger the adjoining 8th Street Latino community grew and when all the jobs were finally gone the riots happened. That's when people were dragged from their cars and beaten to death. Most of the murders happened on the first day of the riots. Dozens were killed.
I almost lost my own life that day at an intersection near Liberty City. I saw people dragged from their cars and killed not 1/4 mile ahead of me near Liberty City. I will never forget it.
So what's my point with this awful story on a dreary winter night?
I'm not sure.
Maybe it's this...
There is NOTHING unusual about all the denigrating cartoons and horrible treatment some Irish immigrants to this country have received.
The only thing that would be unusual is if it did NOT happen, when you look at the similar treatment of ANY other identifiable ethnic group that has come ( and are still coming ) to this country.
It ain't ancient history, either.
It's all still going on even as I type this little story.
It's the fear of strangers. The fear that you are going to personally lose something. The fear that you will have to give something up. The fear of your own little fears. That's what's behind every organized 'denigration' effort.
I am 'new' Irish.
All four of my actual grandparents were born on "the sod". 3 in County Cork and one in County Kerry.
I am as close to being Irish as you can get without having the accent and I am also automatically entitled to Irish citizenship.
As long as I can remember the whole "O'Irish" thing around St. Patrick's day has bothered me but later on, the light of history made it all clear to me.
It's really about RESPECT.
People denigrate what they FEAR...
...but they imitate what they RESPECT.
By the time the Civil War ended... there was NO DOUBT that all of the marketing and the hype about the Irish was just that. It took that one horrible event, and the contributions and the heroism of the Irish ( on both sides ) to erase the financed marketing of the previous 2 decades.
But it stuck.
Since then... it's been about RESPECT.
And that's the way it is today.
So if you see someone pretending they are Irish on St. Patrick's Day wearing whatever their own creativity produces.. just walk up and say "You're Welcome"... because that's just their way of saying "Thank You".
Thanks for helping us build/save a country. Thanks for allowing us to make fun of you. Thanks for the toughness of spirit to handle our own unkindnesses but to stick it out and forge ahead. Thanks for being here.
Wasn't it Tommy Makem himself who, when asked if all the O'Irishness ever bothered him, answered with...
"Not if it's well done, me lad"
"Not if it's well done."
Actually, in this particular cartoon the "Irish Dynamiters" refers to the bombings of English cities in the 1880's by Irish rebels, orchestrated in American by exiled Fenian leader O'Donovan Rossa.
Thank you everyone for your comments. This is what Irish heritage is all about. We are all Irish, but have different experiences growing up here in America. Some of us have experienced prejudice others have not.
When we come together for the festival it is a true celebration of our heritage and how far we have come. We welcome everyone celebrate with us.
Barbara Scanlon
Heritage Committee
( Is it OK to say negro? I have lost track of what is permissible for that ethnic group ).
Dear Kevin Kiley,
No.
Kevin,
The Irish being used rather than Africans really comes into play during the digging of the channels in New Orleans during slaveholding times.
Irish immigrants, of which there were plenty because New York and Boston would occasionally close down to the hordes of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato blight, rerouting those ships southward to Savannah and New Orleans, were used because they didn't cost anyone anything if they drowned, were eaten by gators or lost to disease. There was always another shipload of "Paddies" just over the horizon. A slave, meanwhile, was a financial investment and could not be "wasted" on such civic improvemnts.
And thank you, Dan, for the clarification on the "dynamiter" reference. O'Rossa, you may recall, was also used by the planners of the 1916 Easter Rising when they brought his body home to Ireland and staged an elaborate funeral and over whose grave Padraig Pearse made a very stirring speech, winning new recruits to the cause.
"They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but, the fools, the fools, the fools! — They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."
-Padraig Pearse, at the funeral of O'Donovan Rossa, 1915
Considering this is 2008 and not 1850 I'm not offended by Irish Stereotypes. The descendants of Irish immigrants have pretty much been assimilated into American society. The English and Irish have stopped killing each other. I don't hear about the Irish being discriminated against anymore, although I guess it still might occur in rare circumstances somewhere by someone. But I don't think it's a major problem anymore.
And dammit, monkeys are funny, especially dancing monkeys, and DEFINITELY Irish dancing monkeys! (Yes, I know they are actually chimpanzees. Don't correct me. It's funnier to say "monkey")
Have read all the other comments and my hat is firmly in hand here on a few points. Thanks to all for reading.
Re: negro
My apologies. I really have lost track of what you are supposed to say. Two of my best friends growing up were ( ???? ) and we called each other things I couldn't even print here... but as for the general word to us... I'm lost. Someone clue me in so I will know what "doesn't offend".
Re: Dynamiters
My apologies. I'm not a student of Irish History, per se, and I didn't catch the real reference.
The story about the "American Irish Railroad Dynamiters" is true, though. ( The Irish have always been good with explosives, I guess. )
Re: The Irish workers in New Orleans and thereabouts.
Absolutely. Heard those stories as well and your observations are correct. AT THAT TIME... the ( ?? other ethnic group ?? ) were considered "Property", with an investment involved, and that automatically made them "more valuable" than the Irish. That's the reason the Irish were used for the most dangerous jobs on the Railroad as well. The Railroad company themselves had "purchased" the ( other ethnic group ) and they were just "protecting their investment" by using the "disposable" workers for the most dangerous things.
Re: Monkey versus Chimpanze.
No contest. Monkey is funnier.
Kevin, blacks or African Americans. Negro comes across to me as not so much offensive as old-fashioned. Though I can't vouch for how black people tend to see it.
Well, see, that's where I am just confused. I have always thought that the term "Black" is offensive and would never use it. It's not only just wrong as far as any pigment chart goes... it just sounds condescending ( IMHO ). The whole "African American" thing has always confused me as well. To keep things on-topic...I would certainly correct anyone who called me an "Irish American". I am not. I am an American. I was born on this soil and no other. The country of birth of my ancestors is just an incidental thing. Contrary-wise... if someone called me "caucasian" I would NOT feel the need to correct them because... well.. that's just accurate.
So, old fashioned or not, I've never had anyone tell me what's really wrong with "negro". Isn't that the equivalent of "caucasian"?
Just a neutral descriptive?
I'm not trying to be a wise-butt here. I'm genuinely interested in what WORD I'm SUPPOSED to be using. No one ever seems to really know and I'm never interested in offending people if I can help it.
Kevin,
I am sure black is the correct word. I work with several black men and I used the word colored one day, guess that gives my age away. Needless to say I was abruptly told that it was offensive and so was Negro. I asked what the correct term was, and was told black. Hope this helps.
I see my previous comment didn't appear. Are anonymous folks not allowed to clarify their posts? If I'd been treated okay when I've posted by name, I'd be happy to do so.
Anyway, I honestly am the "anonymous" who posted the post starting "Kevin, blacks or African Americans.". And I want to clarify that I'm quite certain on the correctness of the terms black and African American. When I said I can't vouch how blacks see it, I was referring to the term "negro" that I had just commented on.
I've posted every comment I've gotten, anonymous or no. You might want to resend if I'm missing one of yours.
Just got near a computer again after a day or so and wanted to say "Thank You" for the followups.
I mean it.
It's a touchy subject that was broached and went beyond what just one particular ethnic group may or may not find 'offensive'... but a good, honest discussion nonetheless.
Did a little surveying of other opinions myself RE: enthnic group #2 and the verdict does seem to be in these days.
Least offensive references...
In this order...
1. Black
2. African American
3. Negro
4. Colored
..and yes... you ( I ) should be really careful falling back to number 3 or 4. Stick with 1 or 2
to stay out of the dog house.
I hope everyone has a great Saint Patrick's Day!
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