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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Northern doesn't mean everything is a perfect state of equality - many of the northern states were, for example, perfectly happy to profit from the raw materials produced by slaves and when black people started fleeing the south after the war, a lot of northern states had strong negative reactions. For example, one of the things which helped Irish immigrants like my ancestors get accepted into the white club was their value as cheap labor to lower black negotiating power and a lot of them were recruited into rapidly expanded police forces for the same reasons. A TON of money was poured into exploiting racial factions in the nascent labor movement since business owners saw how much less profitable things would be if there was a unified front, and that did not stop at the Mason-Dixon line.

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Just a side note: the idea that Irish people weren’t considered white is a myth (same with Italians and Jews)[0]. Irish people could go to white-only venues/places, could marry other white people, weren’t affected by segregation, etc in every instance in society where you were “checked for white”, Irish people passed.

The book the myth is based on “How the Irish Became White” defines white basically as “didn’t face discrimination”, which Irish people certainly did, but never because they “weren’t white”. Obviously these are different things, and this (I think deliberately) confusing framing leads to the myth. This is just a piece of the reason why defining “whiteness” as anything other than the skin color is racist and inaccurate, and it throws a wrench into the idea that American history is just “white = free, nonwhite = all discrimination”, which is a convenient narrative but completely fabricated.

This doesn’t at all diminish the discrimination other groups suffered, but Irish people were considered white and STILL received significant discrimination (Italians and Jews too, Catholics as a religious example as well).

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

> Just a side note: the idea that Irish people weren’t considered white is a myth (same with Italians and Jews). Irish people could go to white-only venues/places, could marry other white people, weren’t affected by segregation, etc in every instance in society where you were “checked for white”, Irish people passed.

It's a shorthand but it's not a myth. Yes, they weren't discriminated against as badly. No, they did not have the full access to and support of society which that term is shorthand for.

(And, no, this did not start with a book which came out in 1995)

Sorry updated to reflect the source, here it it’s again: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

Yes, it’s a myth. 100%. There’s only 2 ways of reading “Irish people weren’t considered white”. The first is that people didn’t consider them white in the consensus definition of the word: white skin/being of white stock/white-classed ethnicity - which Irish were considered to fit this (thus the claim is a myth).

The other way of interpreting this statement is that white has any definition other than the commonly accepted one. In this case, not only has it led to so much misinformation (people genuinely think Irish people weren’t considered white people), but in this particular definition of “white” it is racist and assumes white supremacy by definition by just putting anyone discriminated against in any way as “definitely not white”, an entirely politically motivated definition, and so should be entirely disregarded.

“Irish people weren’t considered white” is a myth, it’s completely wrong. If you are trying to say something like “Irish people received more discrimination than anglo-Saxons”, then just say that rather than appropriating the term white for political purposes.

I am not the OP but believe they used the term “white” in historical context and did not “appropriate it for political purposes” in contemporary context.

Again, it's not that simple and if we're concerned about "political purposes" consider that a right-wing commenter's opinion piece arguing against against his political opponents is perhaps not exactly the complete historical consensus. For example, note how he left out things like "No Irish need apply" signs or anti-Jewish quotas or social stigma because those undercut the point.

Many of the groups we now consider white were not originally fully accepted as such. If you want to argue that we should have a different term than "whiteness" to describe that, fine, but there is plenty of scholarly usage of the term and it doesn't change the intended meaning that different groups had different levels of acceptance and, most relevantly, joining the anti-Black side tended to be an effective way to avoid one's own status being question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...

What does “no Irish need apply” etc have to do with whiteness such that leaving it out undercuts the point? You know people can be prejudice outside of skin color right?

Here's what I originally wrote:

> For example, one of the things which helped Irish immigrants like my ancestors get accepted into the white club was their value as cheap labor to lower black negotiating power and a lot of them were recruited into rapidly expanded police forces for the same reasons.

The point was that while the Irish (or Jews, or Italians, or …) were not considered enslavable prior to the Civil War or on the Black side of the Jim Crow laws afterwards, they also were not treated as full members of society with equal access to the courts, jobs, education, etc. and one of the ways that all of those groups were able to improve their status was by joining the white side of anti-Black discrimination by taking jobs, becoming cops, keeping neighborhoods segregated, etc.

Again, the point wasn't that no other forms of discrimination have ever been practiced but that just because the Northern states fought the South didn't mean that they didn't have significant problems with anti-Black discrimination. In the context of this post, prison labor was used to fill some demand for cheap labor to replace slaves and the North was again more than willing to look the other way or profit from that labor even if it wasn't as common (or severe) in their states.

You are talking a totally different point here!

Being discriminated against in job opportunities and so on has NOTHING to do with being white. Tying them inextricably together is completely unnecessary and pollutes the conversation with borderline racism.

Being white is as simple as being black, or any other race: it’s your lineage/how you are perceived/how you identify/etc all wrapped into one and can be complicated. It is not at all dependent on your rights, or level of discrimination.

In all laws that grouped treatment on race (segregation, Jim Crow, quotas, etc) Irish people fell into the white category, every single time. Despite harsh miscegenation laws, Irish people could “intermarry” other white people without any issue - because it wasn’t intermarrying - they were all considered white. That they also received other discrimination is irrelevant to the question.

Would you suggest Irish people aren’t white even today? All the same arguments that “demonstrate” racial discrimination: longer jail sentences, lower incomes and wealth, etc for black people show Irish people trailing behind white averages too. So even though nearly every American would consider Irish people to be white, because of the discrepancy in outcomes you’d say Irish people aren’t white?

By all legal stipulations, there’s no indication that Irish people were not always considered white. There is not a single instance where Irish people were denied from “white” accommodations. They were always considered to be of “white racial stock”.

They received discrimination in other ways, including for Irish ancestry, but not for being white. Do you understand how those are different? The article DID mention “Irish need not apply” signs, but that’s on the basis of ethnicity, not race.

Different groups had different levels of acceptance even today. The vast majority of Americans consider Jews to be white, but there are still people who dislike Jews. Jews receiving discrimination doesn’t make them any less white.

Even your linked article has 0 examples of Irish people not being considered white. You seem to be under the impression that being white by definition can’t receive racial discrimination, and if they do then they can’t be considered white by definition. That’s a ridiculous definition, it’s confusing, and black/Asian/etc has no kind of definition so this definition is clearly just politically motivated - it overloads a commonly understood term to smuggle in the idea that white supremacy is just true by definition and whites people never experience racism by definition. Both of which defy observed reality, making this an entirely nonsense definition.

The only valid definition of white is the commonly accepted one: of the white racial group as decided by a combination of factors including your lineage, how you are perceived, and so on. This is the same definition for any race, and under this definition: Irish people have always been considered white.

Your points about the American definitions of "white" are certainly valid. The US racial system was primarily built around creating "black" and "indian" (and later "asian"), and it's certainly arguable that Italians, Irish, and Jews were always "white" in the US under some definitions of race.

However, your definition of race is incomplete.

> defining “whiteness” as anything other than the skin color is racist and inaccurate

You are assuming that race is an objective measure, but there isn't a scientific definition of race which matches common understandings of race. Instead of accepting that people may act on a personal understanding of race, you are asserting that their definition of race doesn't match your definition, and so there's no racial component at play. Ethnicity has a habit of becoming racialized. For example:

> Different groups had different levels of acceptance even today. The vast majority of Americans consider Jews to be white, but there are still people who dislike Jews. Jews receiving discrimination doesn’t make them any less white.

Does it matter that you think that Jews are white if the Nazis did not believe that? They created racial categories for the purpose of discrimination. Jews and Slavs were subject to "racialization" by the Nazis. We can say that Jews in Europe faced racial oppression under the Nazis because the Nazis oppressed them by labeling them a race. In fact, the Nazi classification of the Jewish Race meets your updated definition:

> The only valid definition of white is the commonly accepted one: of the white racial group as decided by a combination of factors including your lineage, how you are perceived, and so on.

The problem with your insistence that the Irish and Jews are white is that there isn't an authoritative white lineage or white appearance. People disagree[1] over who's considered white.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_th...

I highly recommend reading How the Irish Became White [0]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics...

This is the exact book the myth is based on. Here’s a debunk of the book: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

It’s pretty simple: the book doesn’t mean “white” like white, you know the actual definition of the word. It means “white: having the most rights”, which isn’t the definition at all and is deliberately misleading. It pretends like being white a priori makes one immune from discrimination.

Irish people were always considered white, they were also discriminated against more than anglo-Saxons. Both of these are true. The only reason this would be hard to comprehend is if you have the warped view that American history is just white supremacy (clearly many whites didn’t have it so good).

> It means “white: having the most rights”, which isn’t the definition at all and is deliberately misleading

So what is the definition then?

White skin?

Please read the book.

You can't expect people to go off and read a book just to prove your point for you.

I just don't think this is the right forum to discuss this.

You're already discussing it, maybe you don't want people to reply.

The definition of white is that same as that for any other racial group: a member of the white racial group, determined by a combination of lineage, how one is perceived, how one perceives themselves, and more. It can be complicated, and so is usually just determined by a “I know it when I see it” test, or self identification. But certain hard rules like where your ancestry is from and how your parents race is exist.

Not only is it racist, there’s also no sense in tying extra garbage like “level of discrimination” to the definition of white - it just doesn’t match up to observed reality. White people have been enslaved, white people are discriminated against in many countries where they aren’t the majority, white groups receive varying levels of discrimination even now. These facts don’t make a person any more or less white.

Ah, so Irish went from basically being owned in Ireland to totally accepted when they came to WASP America? Having Irish family with written family history, you can fuck off with your 'well actually' racespalining. I would say being starved to death between 1845 – 1852 because you were Irish very much refutes anything you presented.

No, Irish people aren’t and will never be WASPs, because you have to be anglo-Saxon to be White Anglo-Saxon, Protestant.

Beyond that: being white and being accepted in America having little to do with each other. In every legal instance of discrimination on the basis of race (segregation, Jim Crow, etc), Irish people fell in the white category. Despite harsh miscegenation laws, Irish people could “intermarry” other white people without any issue - because it wasn’t intermarrying - they were all considered white.

This is the problem with the nonsense definition of white as “accepted in America and receiving zero discrimination”. Was JFK not white either because he was Catholic and Catholics dealt with discrimination through US history? Of course not.

Irish people have worse outcomes today vs the average for whites across incomes, wealth, interview rates, and so on. Are they still not white today?

White has a very simple meaning, like black or Asian does: it’s determined by your lineage and how you are perceived by other and yourself, with a few other factors. It’s complicated in some cases, but it has nothing to do with your level of discrimination. Do you think white people can’t receive discrimination by definition? If one is discriminated against, are they no longer white?

And you mentioned starving in the Irish Potato Famine. That was a failure of government policy and farmers breeding the same strain. The prevailing British policy was that you only received welfare benefits if you didn’t own land, and so many Irish farmers and others who needed it weren’t willing to give up their land for it. That has nothing to do with race

And too add, how many millions of Jews were killed because they were Jewish in the middle of the last century? And how many American's were fine with this? How long did America choose to be impartial to this? Again, you can fuck right off with your racist bull shit. When you are MURDERED in the MILLIONS for being Irish/Jewish, then yes, society does see you as less than human and an other. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

The issue is you’ve wrapped up so much in the word “white” that you’re confusing yourself. You seem to be under the impression that intra-racial discrimination can’t exist?

The Rwandan genocide was entirely between black people, but 2 different ethnic groups. It was a brutal genocide, ethnic discrimination to the extreme, but that doesn’t make anyone less black. Colorism exists, that doesn’t make anyone less black. WW2 was a massive violent conflict between predominantly white people. Tens of millions died, and Americans were as willing to kill Germans as Germans were to kill the British and so on. They are all white.

Being of the same race doesn’t mean there’s also massive racial solidarity at all times. White Americans today are fairly split between conservative and democrats even now. Is one group less white?

This is just a few of the contradictions created when you try to cram “discrimination” in as an aspect of being white (but not for any other race). It’s such a narrow, racist, incorrect worldview that runs against reality pretty much everywhere. It serves no academic usefulness at all except agenda-pushing

I'd like to just point out that you start finger pointing when the cause is probably much more complex than hey they did it down there and has nothing to do with us civilized folks up here. You live here and slavery hasn't been a thing for 160 years and yet this is still the state of the country's prisons.

It sounds like you’re reading something into that which I didn’t intend. My point was simply that the north wasn’t innocent and since we never fully dealt with discrimination it’s unsurprising that the problems were reduced but not fully resolved.

How did this become an issue with discrimination? My point is that the legacy of slavery could be a contributing factor, but if you keep dueling on that you miss many other insane factors that are very much at play at this very moment.

The state of prisons in the US is abhorrent and not what one would expect from a modern democratic nation, which coincidentally also claims to be the champion of freedom.

See my original comment: the 13th amendment allows involuntary servitude as a legal penalty. The problem with that is when the entire legal system has a particular bias, it's really easy to start rounding up low-status people for dubious or minor offenses when a fellow high-status peer needs cheap labor.

> Northern doesn't mean everything is a perfect state of equality

I never claimed it did. Your previous post suggested we got to this point by "allowing the South to rebuild many of the same power structures". Even if that were the whole story in the South, it does nothing to explain the situation in the North.

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