Christian Science Monitor: No, the Irish were not slaves in the Americas

[Quixote1818]

Looks like this myth is no making the rounds again to make white conservatives feel better about their racism:



Snip:

The myth draws on a false equivalency between two distinct systems of forced labor in the British colonial period: indentured servitude and chattel slavery. Indentured servants in the British colonies were legal persons bound to service by a time-limited, non-hereditary labor contract, often signed in exchange for passage to the New World. Slaves, by contrast, were considered property, a subhuman legal status that was passed from mother to child, in perpetuity.

More: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2018/0316/No-the-Irish-were-not-slaves-in-the-Americas

[Wounded Bear]

1. Semantics aside, they were treated like shit...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I think you are confusing that early indentured servitude

with the ill treatment of the Irish who came in huge numbers because of the famine.

But eventually,
We worked on the subways, we ran the saloons
we built all the bridges, we played all the tunes
We put out the fires and controlled City Hall
we started with nothing and wound up with it all

[NBachers]

4. Wasn't that nice - Thank you.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. I am glad you liked it.

All four of my grandparents came from Ireland. When I was a little girl the elderly aunts would all look at me and say (imagine an Irish accent here) "Ahh, she has the map of Ireland on her face."

My parental generation all married fellow Irish Americans. But I grew up in this country, and even if we only think about those from northern or western Europe, there's still a certain amount of diversity. And if you include those from southern Europe or even the rest of the world . . . well, just imagine. Oh, right, you can. You live in this wonderful country.

The first time I went to Ireland, in 1972 when I was 23 years old, I was completely gobsmacked. Every single person I saw looked exactly like my brothers and my sisters and my cousins. Oh, my.

In 1989 my brother set up a family trip to Ireland. Mom, five of her six children, five of her seven grandchildren, sons and daughters in law, plus a cousin on Mom's side and the cousin's new husband who was also Irish American. Well. Every single time we split up and then re-connected, it was bizarre, because I'd be looking at approaching people and thinking, "Yes! No! Looks like her. Oops, not her. Isn't that? Uh oh, not." Again proof that I was truly from that country.

[Hekate]

10. I had that experience the first time I went to Boston: there was a "cousin" on every street corner

I was as gobsmacked as you. My ancestors just kept moving West until we landed in California (where I was born) and then Hawai'i (where I was raised). As far as I know all the Irish ancestors came during or a bit before the Famine, so there was no one to tell me how very Irish I look.

Of course I looked like my own family (and Mom made sure we all knew our roots) but other than that we were just Anglos in California and Haoles in Hawai'i. I visited Boston in my early 30s and was really startled, not having been in an actual visually identifiable ethnic group before.

When I visited Ireland in my early 50s -- well, you know.

I'm glad I went when I did. It looks like I won't get another chance.

[NurseJackie]

17. You may qualify for dual citizenship. (I wish such a thing was possible for me...

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/irish_citizenship/irish_citizenship_through_birth_or_descent.html

You may qualify for dual citizenship. (I wish such a thing was possible for me... but I'm too old, I lack the funds, and don't have any "in-demand" skills that would qualify me for dual citizenship with the UK or any EU country. So, it remains a fantasy.)

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. I do, but tracking down the required legal papers has proved a challenge.

You need birth certificates and marriage certificates to show you are the legal child or grandchild of an Irish citizen. I tried collecting that stuff some years back and just couldn't find where either set of grandparents had been married. Oh, well.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. Ownership, the legal right to rape or kill at will is hardly "semantics."

[Celerity]

5. +100000

[Solomon]

12. Thank you!! smh

[irisblue]

13. Yeah.

[SunSeeker]

6. I actually had a white in-law post on Facebook about how when she was a kid she picked cotton.

She was suggesting that it was the equivalent of slavery, so what's the big deal. Of course, my in-law got paid for picking cotton, was not owned by her employer, she could leave any time, was not whipped and kept in a dirt floor shed, and at the end of the summer season, she went back to school, and didn't get raped and impregnated by her employer to create more cotton pickers for her employer, nor were her parents sold off by her employer, nor were her husband and kids. But other than that, yeah, just like slavery.

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Did She Do It Until She Died?

Did she have the option to quit?
Were her children forced to become next generation cotton pickers?
No, no, & no.
She's a buffoon!

[SunSeeker]

19. Yup, she's a buffoon and a racist Trump supporter, voting against her own self interest.

[Xolodno]

8. Satire...think a Blazing Saddles line is appropiate.

All right, we'll give some land to the n*ggers and the chinks, but we DON'T WANT THE IRISH

[Quixote1818]

9. I thought of that line too when I was looking this up

Movie was a total crack up.

[OnDoutside]

16. Up to the 70s in the UK, landladies used to put signs in the window, No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish.

[whistler162]

11. Yeah...better sold for supposed debts or crimes

than being sold because they stole you from your home!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_indentured_servants#Comparisons_to_slavery

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. Indentured servitude was for a fixed term, not life

one of my ancestors is a French Huguenot named Mareen Duvall, who arrived in Maryland in the 1650's after having been taken prisoner in Scotland while fighting on the Royalist side in the English Civil War; he was an indentured servant, and the man who held his service contract sold it to someone else. He worked off his indenture, and in 1658 he patented his first tract of land. At his death in 1694, he left an estate that consisted of almost three thousand acres of land and eighteen slaves. If he'd been a slave? He would've died a slave. There is not really any useful comparison to be made between the conditions endured by indentured servants and slaves.