Posted on 08/04/2015 6:21:28 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski
The Internet has been buzzing about how discrimination against the Irish was a myth. All it took was a high schooler to prove them wrong. Rebecca Fried had no intention of preserving the record of a persecuted people whose strife was ready to be permanently written off in the eyes of history as exaggerated, imagined, or even invented.
That's because Rebecca was too busy trying to get through the 8th grade. In 2002, University of Illinois-Chicago history professor Richard J. Jensen printed No Irish Need Apply: A Myth of Victimization. His abstract begins: Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming Help WantedNo Irish Need Apply! No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent.
In short, those famous No Irish Need Apply signsones that proved Irish Americans faced explicit job discrimination in the 19th and 20th centuries? Professor Jensen came to the blockbuster conclusion that they never existed...
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
That is the very ad proffered in Jensen’s article:
‘18. See the ad in The New York Times of March 25, 1854 shown below—this is the only NINA ad for men anyone has ever found; also see Sept. 21, 1859. The Times of Jan 9, 1854, had an ad for servants from a “Protestant Employment Society.” A houseworker ad on February 10, 1858 specified, “Only Scotch need apply.” For comparison, the search engine turned up 25 instances of the phrase “respectable young girl” in 1861 alone, plus 34 entreaties for a “first rate cook” that year. It turned up a solitary ad that specified “only Americans need apply”for a governess position in Kentucky. New York Times July 18, 1855. The New York Irish-American (May 28, 1853) vowed that “we shall kill this anti-Irish-servant-maid crusade.” It claimed to have hired a lawyer to sue the advertisers and the papers involved. On May 16, 1857, it proudly noted that there had not been a “no Irish need apply” ad in a while. On maids see David M. Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (1978).
Interesting that apparently this girl Rebecca is a fellow student of the Obama daughters.
They were called “Thick Micks”.
No lawsuits,no calling the ACLU,no whining.
The Irish just went ahead and proved everyone wrong.
.
The Irish were treated poorly because they came from Germany and everybody hates the Germans.
Well, it might have been done. But something to remember is that whites had no immunity to the disease. Washington had his army immunized because the smallpox had spread widely in the Continental Army. Disease did moret to end the Quebec expedition than the Redcoats did.
As for white diseases and indians, Desotos expedition destroyed whole indians communities, some even before making direct contact. Further Soto had brought a lot of pigs with him and they spread the disease into the local wildlife when they themselves went while. The razorback in Arkansas probably came from De Soto.
Joe Yule Jr.
BTW, can’t get access to the Sidwell girl’s article.
I’m not going to subscribe just for that. No thanks.
So if I cannot examine the article, I cannot go on “Google search” as great research, nor the word of those praising it all over the ‘net. I’m sure some things turned up, but the research really has to be seen to be understood.
Please compare German history in America to Irish.
Seriously.
No one complains about bad treatment (even though they did get it in WWI), and no celebratory movies galore (as a juxtaposition) through Hollywood history. Much less a holiday for them (which is not a bloviating nationalistic holiday in Ireland).
Actually the University of Illinois in Urbana is considered a good research university. Some of the departments are about the best in the country.
Outstanding post, outstanding article.
I think even Rose Kennedy could take issue with the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic professor and history reviser.
Go to Google images and search No Irish Need Apply.
Some years back, a Chicago Judge had a collection of anti Irish signs;yes he was Irish.
Occasionally the papers would have a photo of the Judge, the signs would be in the background.
And if you go to an Irish pub and ask around, you'll find that a number of such people are superheroes.
Don’t really think smallpox could live very long on blankets...........
I hope everyone realises that denying Irish discrimination like this is all about re-writing history to reflect the leftist myth that only non-whites like the Chinese faced discrimination in horrible racist America.
It’s about reinforcing white guilt and the concept of White privilege.
Sigh, it’s too bad this thread can’t be the scene of an honest, informed discussion on an historical issue. Once again, if anybody’s interested, the original article by Jensen is here
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm
and it’s actually very scholarly and documented. Why not look at that article first before you criticize it, it’s not “anti-Irish” or “anti-Catholic” or “PC revisionism”.
Then, if you disagree with a conclusion of the article, put your documented objections together and send them to Dr. Jensen. That’s the way open discussion is supposed to work in a free society. After all, this is “Free Republic”, right? Good night everybody.
The reason why the false narrative was so embraced by the media and other academics is because it conforms to the narrative that America is “racist”. That white immigrants were treated better than the current Hispanic ones.
I believe there was one documented case where it was done, and that was woven into a widespread scheme by those in the victimhood industry. As far as any real historian is concerned, it happened once.
See # 59.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.