Is history repeating itself on the other side of the country?
In 1845, about 15 years prior to the Civil War, a potato famine hit Ireland so badly that anyone who had the ability left for greener shores. In many, many cases that meant New York and Boston.
The civil war had yet to be fought, so there were no immigration laws, the radical republicans had not yet taken the Congress, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments weren’t proposed yet. For all intents and purposes they’d become Americans by showing up here, but the WASP Ascendancy barely recognized them. They were not considered white; their Infant Mortality Rate was astronomical leading one Census worker to comment, “The Irish were literally born to die.” Signs reading “No Irish Need Apply” were regularly hung, and they lived, in most cases, in tenement housing; cramped, poorly built, structurally dangerous, and lacked maintenance.
But that was 165 years ago. Today we don’t question any man of Irish decendency as to whether or not he’s white. This may or may not have to do with an influx of other, darker races, but probably has more to do with how wide spread they’ve become. Today, give or take a few thousand, roughly 36 million Americans can trace their heritage back to Ireland.
And while they clung to their own cultural identity, they embraced with open arms (politically if not literally) the other immigrants waves of Italians and Eastern Europeans to form a permanent political majority for their political party. I am purposely not saying “Democrats” there because history shows their choice was less platform and more reaction. The Protestant Establishment in the former colonies was fierce, ruthless, and apathetic to the plight of the new immigrant classes. They forged themselves with a then dormant party and used it like a shield to take up the problems and struggles of the class. They did so then because the Republican Party then gave them no options to join their ranks.
In a seemingly “bizarre-o” world turn of events, Phoenix is the new Boston.
Ignore the conditions listed before. I don’t know that its wise to try and compare how the Irish lived then (two centuries ago) and how Latino’s live today. The Country is different, the regulations on housing, medical care, the social programs are, well first of all they exist. There was no such philosophy let alone law in the 1840’s that dictated how anything really had to be done. But politics isn’t figures on a spreadsheet, its perception.
The growing perception is, through talk of walls, mandated English, “anchor babies”, and SB1070 – as well as Amending the 14th Amendment – that the Republican Party are the WASPs to the Latino’s Irish.
If you’re following this furor, then I’m sure you’ve heard about the numbers. Fastest growing demographic, a birthrate that’s set to dislodge white people as being larger than all other minorities combined. (Note: Whites will still be a majority, they just won’t beat, as a group, all other races combined). But those are logic-tactics. You can almost hear, in a very avuncular tone, the father figure saying, “you’d better be careful now.”
The problem is not votes; the problem is dignity. And it isn’t American, its global and historical. Nations and peoples can be defeated, but if they are humiliated, they will tell their children of the vicious opression that faced them as they came to America, passed down like camp-fire horror stories that become a cemented reality unified with cultural identity.
Ask any eastern Frenchmen about the Nazi’s. As any Jewish Immigrant for that matter. Ask Southerners how they feel about General Sherman, or Iranians how they felt about the Shah. Civility and Diplomacy cannot be measured in the safety it provides the future.
Last night I watched Charlie Wilson’s War. If you haven’t seen it, you should do yourself the favor. But in it, the Afghani’s make a point to tell the Western World that they do not want food, or medicine. They want weapons. They want to defeat the Imperial Soviets and they want their land back. Its hard to imagine a better illustration of what dignity is than to mention a people who have almost nothing, living in rocks, and tribal villages and showing how all they want is to be left to their own devices. It’s saddening on a level one can’t imagine to have so little and be deprived of it still.
The Latino Community, prior to the dust up over SB1070, had two major concerns when it came to politics; Jobs and Education. Say what you will but those could go to either party, and it suggests that they came here not for themselves but for their children. Marco Rubio was on television two days ago echoing that sentiment when he responded to the recent moronic comments by Sen. Harry Reid.
The Latino community wants to be here, and they want to be American. The Irish still have their parades, the Italians, Polish, and the Portuguese their festivals. They still hand their language down to children. Mexican’s, Guatemalans, Cubans, et. al are doing nothing no less different than what the immigrant classes of the past have done, and unfortunately for them, that means engaging in the same struggles and legislative battles of every class before them.
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