"How the Irish Became White Again"

 Trisha McOrmond: (Métis Sociologist. Policy Punk. Coach. Writer. Speaker. Committed to building a world prepared for the future)

I’ve been reading How the Irish Became White again and reflecting on what it means in this moment …

This line “… the assimilation of the Irish into the white race made it possible to maintain slavery.”

Super revealing.

He continues “The need to gain the loyalty of the Irish explains why the Democratic Party rejected nativism. It also explains why not merely slaverybut the colour line became so important to it.”

The psychological benefits of being white are a mechanism of control “sure my boss pays me nothing and leaves me to die on the street, but at least I’m not Black.”

These outweigh the physiological pain of hunger by creating a sense of belonging.

And creating a sense of belonging with the “in” group is a part of safety, “I’m with them”

But when you can’t belong, you learn to fit in. And by fitting in, we give up ourselves. Just like the Irish abandoned themselves when they stopped fighting for the equality they’d long stood for.

In this moment it means: Part of professionalism in our current economy is fitting in, pretending everything is fine while science and our eyes tell us something very different.

The illusion of fitting in by denying what we know to be true is more comfortable in the moment, absolutely.

In the long run though, speaking from personal experience, deciding to stop pretending is the best decision I’ve ever made.

Find groups who embrace all of you, not just the pretty parts, so we can all do work that matters for our selves and our communities.

Give up the goal of being popular, which is really all whiteness is to paraphrase Ignatiev - a popularity contest among mostly incompetent people who rule by fear and violence (and no one really likes anyway) and require you to lie to yourself about what is real.