One of America's biggest root problems: Scots-Irish culture

[hunter]

66. The Protestant vs. Catholic warfare has always been intense in my family.

Two of my ancestors fled Britain for the American West, for shame, when a proud Protestant Scots-Irish young man fell for a fiery young Catholic woman, which was both a common occurrence and literary device. On the surface this branch of the family was Protestant, mostly because that's where the money was. Catholicism was kept in the closet, but it was kept. Prejudice against the Catholic Irish was still very strong most places.

The other branch of my family was "not-Mormon," a mix of religious people and heretics who built a life within Mormon territories as "not-Mormons." If someone needed some not-Mormon mediation, or alcoholic beverages, it was useful to have discreet connections, people who wouldn't out Mormon sins and weaknesses to other Mormons.

Among my children's and their cousins' generation the Irish Catholic has reasserted itself. The Protestant veneer has evaporated and even the agnostics and atheists among them are Irish Catholic style agnostics and atheists.

There are undoubtedly Scots-Irish influences on Southeastern culture, but the generalization strikes me as too broad. The greatest influence on that culture were clearly slavery and class. The uber-wealthy whites on top, who no doubt considered themselves English sorts of Lords and Ladies, the mostly Scots-Irish working and fighting classes, and the slaves. In the end it's the class structures that mattered more than the national origins of the classes.

Such class structures still exist today in agricultural California with white Republican landowners on top, and undocumented workers, mostly from Mexico, on the bottom. And one can't help but notice that the civil rights of these undocumented workers are limited and they are always at risk of being sent away, especially if they cause "trouble."