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In my personal experience, Irish and Italians remember the history of persecution Michael talks about, but gloss over the history of aiding white supremacy. They then use their history of persecution as a cudgel in arguments for why non-white minorities shouldn’t protest. https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1324169215998386181
I learned about 800 years of subjugation of Ireland under British imperialism, and of solidarity of the Irish independence movement with abolitionists in America. I learned of the Irish betrayal of those ideals of freedom for all in favor of becoming white.
Part of reckoning with white supremacy is understanding the ways in which my personal family history has propagated it. For someone proud of his Irish heritage that’s hard!
Many of the poets of the 1848 Young Ireland uprising, like Daniel O’Connell and Thomas Francis Meagher (father of the Irish tricolor) we’re staunch abolitionists, but saw their movement fracture the second they were displaced to America after a failed revolution.
They became tools of the Confederacy, fighting to subjugate fellow humans in a manner they decried when it was the British subjugating them. It’s a sin of my people I don’t forget, and I tend to remind any white person I see flying the green, white and orange flag.
(To be fair, Daniel O’Connell stuck to his guns and blasted his fellow Irishmen in his Cincinnati Letter for participating in the institution of slavery)
Anyways, I’m not very fun to be around on St. Patrick’s Day.
Everybody should follow @michaelharriot, he rules.
Everybody should follow @michaelharriot, he rules.
