No Irish Need Apply + Irish Assimilation, Camryn Langley
I chose these pictures because I think they relate to many aspects of Alexander’s piece. When the Irish mass immigrated to the United States because of the potato famine, Americans at the time held negative beliefs about the group. In Alexander’s terms, they were associated with the wrong side of the code. People believed the Irish had their loyalties in the Catholic faith rather than in America, and as the cartoon shows, people believed they were violent drunkards. Because of their Catholicism, the Irish were seen as un-American because they were believed to be secretive and not capable of rational decision making. Alexander writes, “If people do not have the capacity for reason, they cannot rationally process information and cannot tell truth from falseness, then they will be loyal foto leaders for purely personal reasons” (2006:61). The political cartoon demonstrates the cultural code while the “no Irish need apply” posting demonstrates a communicative institution. Because the Irish were associated with the wrong side of the code, that was reflected in media and the public sentiment as well as encroached onto other spheres such as the economy. Because the Irish, according to Americans at the time, are secretive and irrational, they cannot be included fully into the civil sphere or trusted with labor. However, being Irish-American today is not as salient an identity as it was in the 19th century. Most Irish-Americans are perceived as white before they are Irish. This speaks to Alexander’s concept that civil society is rooted in space and time and is subject to change. The Irish moved over to the other side of the code. Alexander writes, “Political fights are, in part, about how to distribute actors across the structure of discourse” (2006:65). Through a persistent presence in the American civil sphere and association with the already accepted demographic, the Irish were able to assimilate into the civil sphere.
Citations:
Alexander, Jeffery C. 2006. The Civil Sphere. Oxford University Press.
Nast, Thomas. 1871. “The Usual Way of Doing Things” History. Retrieved March 31, 2022 (https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis)
No name. May 1, 1855. “No Irish Need Apply.” The New York Times. Retrieved March 31, 2022 (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/insider/1854-no-irish-need-apply.html)
This was a very insightful post on how Irish people were assimilated into the larger American body politic, and I appreciate how the images that you chose demonstrate ephemerality and fluidity of race, with the Irish being incorporated into the idea of whiteness. However, I do think that part of this move to assimilation was predicated on the demonization of other ethnic and racial minorities in the United States, and I wonder if this "bringing down other oppressed groups so I can get up" is fundamental to the assimilative mode of incorporation described by Alexander.
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