How the Irish Became White

by Noel Ignatiev

Ignatiev traces the tattered history of Irish and African-American relations, revealing how the Irish used labor unions, the Catholic Church and the Democratic party to help gain and secure their newly found place in the White Republic. He uncovers the roots of conflict between Irish-Americans & African-Americans & draws a powerful connection between the embracing of white supremacy & Irish "success" in 19th century American society.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, Ireland, Sociology, Social Justice

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Noel Ignatiev was an American history professor who earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1995. As part of a group of social scientists and geneticists that views race distinctions and race itself as a social construct, he is best known for his call to abolish the "white race" (meaning "white privilege and race identity") while being the co-founder of the New Abolitionist Society and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor. His position is positively stated in his website's motto: "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity."

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book should actually be called 'how the American Irish became white'. All the same, the current title is a very cute one. As Billy Connolly says somewhere of those of us of a Celtic disposition, we actually start off a pale blue colour and it takes us a couple of weeks in the sun to go white. This, of course, isn’t true, really. In fact, a couple of weeks in the sun and we become snakes, having shed multiple layers of skin.

It wasn’t at all clear that the Irish might ever really become white. It is only within the last hundred years that the Irish have become white even in Ireland – perhaps only 20 years since they became white in England. White, of course, isn’t a skin colour, it is a performance. It is a performance of privilege, and privilege isn’t really something the Irish had all that much experience of in Ireland or elsewhere. I believe Ireland is still the only nation in Europe that has less people now than it did in 1840. The population then was about 6.5 million – the population today is about 4.5 million. Think about that for a second. Take Australia as a case in point for comparison – the population of Australia in 1900 was about 3.5 million – today it is about 23 million. What does it mean for a nation’s population to have gone backwards since the 1840s. Or rather, what do you have to do to a population to ensure such a result?

Within my lifetime people in England would put signs in their windows, when renting rooms, that would read ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’. Google image that to see. So, the question as to when the Irish became white is an interesting one. Not least because, like black Americans, virtually the same dehumanising stereotypes have long been applied to the Irish as to the blacks.

This book presents the issue in a why I’m not sure the author really intended – at least, not given his afterword (which I would almost recommend people read rather than the whole book). The author presents whiteness as a choice the Irish made, that the Irish had other options but that to become white was their choice. To support this idea he discusses Dan O’Connell at length, stressing his disgust at slavery. As Dan O’Connell was the great Irish hero of the day and since he was revolted by slavery, it seems obvious that the Irish who had gone to America and who often considered Dan O’Connell something of a god-like character, that they might likewise be revolted by slavery too.

However, this was rarely the case as is documented in detail here. What is interesting in this book is that the author lays much of the blame for this on the labour movement. He details strikes and attacks by poor Irish on the houses, jobs and livelihoods of even poorer blacks and sees this as means of one underclass, with the simple ‘advantage’ of lighter coloured skin, being able to displace another underclass without even this ‘advantage’.


And it wasn’t enough to merely take these jobs, remember, jobs that no one else wanted to do virtually by definition - but they had to ensure that employers would not replace their labour with the cheaper labour of these black workers. One plays the advantages one has and defines ‘the other’ in ways that exclude them while requiring the continuation of advantage for those ‘like you’. So much for proletarian internationalism...

This is what it means to ‘become white’ - to play this advantage because you are ‘white’.

But what I found particularly interesting in all this wasn’t so much that ‘Christians’ would ignore the apparent requirement from their religion to ‘love thy neighbour, love thy enemy’. Unfortunately, ‘Christians’ tend to be much better at loving powerful enemies than they are at loving powerless ones. This is the ugly side of human nature, obviously enough, which no religious precept seems strong enough to counter for all but the very few. We may like to imagine that the merely poor will do what they can to help the terribly poor - but all too often there is no solidarity between those most in need for the protection of each other. This was true also with the arrival of convicts and their relationship with Australia’s Aboriginal communities too - the horrible strain of this is made clear in early accounts of the settlement at Port Jackson by Watkin Tench https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... The officers were fascinated by the local Aboriginals, but held the convicts in utter contempt. It would be going too far to say this was the reason for the subsequent history of Aboriginal Australia, but it certainly set things off on exactly the wrong foot.

I’m becoming increasingly interested in boundaries and borders. I guess partly because Australia as a nation is obsessed with borders at the moment. Our new government punishes some of the most disadvantaged people on earth in inhuman confinement so as to keep the sanctity of our borders. They have a policy to stop people arriving here called Operation Sovereign Borders. We are prepared to send pregnant women, sick children, and disabled children to tiny tent cities on achingly poor Pacific islands. It is obscene and shameful. But I believe it says something very interesting about how we come to know things. Luhmann says that social institutions set themselves off by delineating themselves in much the same way that cells delineate themselves by creating a cell wall about themselves. There is what is inside and what is outside and this boundary is what creates definition. But like a Coalition Member of Parliament getting to kick a refugee, we police boundaries with care and attention.

The obviousness of black skin - and therefore the affordances that white skin brings - isn’t the only way races might be formed. We need to remember that races don’t really exist as biological facts, they exist as social constructs. Ireland is as good a proof of this as anywhere else. Remember that for over 300 years there have been incredible tensions between two sections of the population, the main difference between them being that one group is rather fond of Jesus and the other group quite likes his mum. If that isn’t reason enough to hate people, I really don’t know what is. And these are people who are identical to one another in virtually every way. So identical that you have to ask the person next to you what school they went to if you are ever going to find out if you should hate them or not.

I liked parts of this book a lot and found a lot of it very interesting. But it really is far too focused on the US and even then mostly only on a couple of states. I found myself wondering how relevant parts where to the overall story. If the lesson that one takes from this book is, ‘there is nothing people on the bottom like more than finding someone below them’, then this really is a painfully depressing book. All the same, some people, even Irish people, clearly did support abolition and did have human decency. Racism is not limited to people at the bottom of social structure - but understanding what motivates people to be racist, the economic, social and psychological benefits they receive that encourages them in their racism, is also important. In the end, racism hurts those on the bottom of the social order much more than those at the top. But not recognising the benefits people feel from racism hardly helps overcome it.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently it was LBJ (and not Malcolm X like I assumed for some reason) who said "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

This quote, I believe, is a concise description of what Ignatiev is explaining in How the Irish Became White. It's not so much about how Irish immigrants changed their ethnicity but rather how they learned about the social structure of their new culture and how to steer it to their advantage.

I feel like Ignatiev could have structured his thoughts in a more cohesive manner (some topics felt like they were spontaneously thrown in and never touched again), but this is still a really interesting read.

What hit me most was the fact that despite centuries of supposed evolution, many things just haven't changed. Near the end, Ignatiev describes race riots that resulted in murdered black people, and their murderers were relocated of the city instead of indicted.

Boy, don't that sound familiar.

This is followed by an account of an autopsy showing that a murdered black man had a chronic kidney condition that would have killed him anyway, and no charges were subsequently made.

Boy, don't THAT sound familiar.

In short, I wanted to read this book to use in arguments with white relatives who always want to play Oppression Olympics with our Irish heritage. This book is full of useful and relevant information, so I got what I wanted.

Bring on the next family gathering.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

A landmark work that seems to only grow in relevance. Ignatiev explains how the Catholic Irish in the late 18th/early 19th centuries fled persecution from the colonised, Protestant-ruled Ireland to find new, freer lives in America. The Irish however quickly found themselves at the very bottom of American society, a rung they shared with Black people. In order for the Irish to engrain themselves in American society, Ignatiev suggests that they had to learn to become just as, if not more, oppressive and racist as their fellow Americans, in essence, the Irish had to become white. The book traverses the 19th century, bill by bill and riot by riot, showing how the new Irish Americans entered 'perpetual warfare' with Black people in order to gain a place in American society.

Ignatiev's research is immense, undeniable and myth-shattering. There's many reasons why this book is heralded as a classic, one of those reasons however is not because of its readability. Sadly, Ignatiev's writing often descends into info-dump as you have dates and names and events just thrown at you and god help you if you aren't paying full attention. The result is a work that is harrowing in both its subject and style, something that is better referenced than read.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the Irish, particularly the rural Catholic Irish, began to flood the eastern cities of the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century their position in society was very low, the lowest, in fact, of any large immigrant population of the era. How was it, Ignatiev asks, that they assimilated into the nation? The answer this book gives is not an uplifting one, hinging as it does upon, generally, the manufacture and maintenance of in and out groups and upon, particularly, the race lines established in the USA by African slavery.
Despite its grim subject matter, Ignatiev's writing style is lively and absorbing. There is even humor here, humor of a darkly ironical sort, as all sorts of unlikely alliances come and go through the decades leading up to the Civil War.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

One finely-written history that challenges a lot of assumptions one may have harbored about our common American past. It will definitely make you cast a jaundiced eye toward anyone who talks about how hard the Irish had it when they first came to America. It might actually make you wanna slap them silly. I don't recommend that, though. Just read the book and share the knowledge.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best works of history on race in America ever written. This book will reward the attentive reader with example after example of how the Irish altered their social position by acquiring "white privilege" long before the word was even known. It dovetails very nicely with the broader and equally brilliant Race: the Birth of An Idea in the West by Ivan Hannaford. Hannaford looks at the 30,000 foot level and the four century perspective. Ignatiev examines one nation, and the history of one ethnic group. Do not be fooled by the ignorant reviewers who did not understand Ignatiev's central thesis. This is a book worth pondering.

[Sharlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book has really important ideas but is terribly written. The main takeaways are crucial, especially for white people's own understanding of their identity and privilege. I'd summarize the main lesson as: Whiteness is historically situated, contingent, and deeply connected if not inseparable from the claimants' willingness to uphold white supremacy through violence. It also does a good job discussing the developing whiteness of the Irish in the context of inter-class conflict and intra-class conflict over limited employment.

[Brandon · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you are Irish and want to feel even worse about yourself, or if you just plain don't like white people, I highly recommend this book. What started as an opportunity to make an interesting, educated, intelligent point on the history of race relations in America, quickly degraded into a tired, narrow-viewed blast against an ethnic group who would dare assimilate into their new land.

I am by no means defending some of the behavior of some Irish in America in the 1800s, however this book had the wrong point to make from inception.

[Andrew]

I hold that if you want to read a book about modern America, you would be advised to read not one of the silly political tracts on the NYT bestseller list, but rather, this book focusing on the history of Irish American immigration, most particularly in Philadelphia in the years preceding the Civil War.

Imagine that you're fucked. Your rent is a month behind, you're freaking out because your wife's period is two weeks late, your boss keeps refusing you raises, and at the same time, you are constantly being told that your problem is "motivation." You see a group of people laboring for cheaper, and while you are aware on some level that they're in the same struggle as you are, the more immediate question is which of you is going to get that job. And those gentle-mannered elites, the ones building schools and throwing charity balls and talking about "uplift," they might talk a big game, but they hate the way you dress, the way you speak. But you're told you're white, and that places you on one side of a line.

This story is the same in 2018 as it was in 1818. The poor inevitably squabble among each other for scarce resources, and the ruling class, are either too greedy, too callous, or too spineless to do anything about it.

[Philrequardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you have any racially neurotic friends? sure you do. have you ever noticed that they often think they're being profound and incisive, but they're actually just speaking and thinking in broad generalities that hold no water when examined in any kind of detail? of course you have. have you ever wanted to crawl inside their minds and bitch slap that racial victim/guilt/fetishist part of them? who hasn't? well, now you can. just tell them to read this book, gain some perspective, and take it down a notch. then read k. anthony appiah and take it down yet another notch. please.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very disappointing book that never answers the question in the title. Instead it is a collection of essays mostly unrelated to each other and only vaguely related to the topic. The most is mostly rambling case studies and anecdotes, with a numbing listing of events with little narrative or explanation.

The focus is also far too narrow, for some reason focusing on Philadelphia around 1840s and 50s, which is only a fraction of the Irish experience. There is never any discussion about what being White actually means.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is a curious fact," wrote John Finch, an English Owenite who traveled the United States in 1843, "that the democratic party, and particularly the poorer class of Irish immigrants in America, are greater enemies to the negro population, and greater advocates for the continuance of negro slavery, than any portion of the population in the free States."

How did the Irish become White? By violently subjugating African Americans, according to this courageous book by Noel Ignatiev.

As a part-Irish American, learning about the injustice that some of my ancestors took part in is deeply troubling, but it's a history that we need to explore to uncover the true legacy of mass Irish immigration to America, and more fundamentally, the meaning of "Whiteness".

The Irish in Ireland of the early-19th Century were a revolutionary people: impoverished, agrarian, and determined to break free of the grip of England's tyranny. But once these same freedom-lovers emigrated to the United States, a peculiar thing happened: they were faced with a society based on racial segregation and industrial capitalism. Moreover, there began a large "Nativist" movement by wealthy Protestant Anglo-Saxons who tried to restrict immigration and subdue Irish/Catholic influence in the New World.

In order to overcome these barriers, the Irish made a strategic choice: escape the bottom-rung of poverty and be accepted into mainstream US society by aggressively aligning themselves with the Democratic Party and doing everything they could to keep African Americans in slavery or otherwise out of the labor market. Thus they earned the right to be considered "White" and receive the benefits and privileges associated with that social category.

Ignatiev makes a compelling case that "When Irish workers encountered Afro-Americans, they fought with them, it is true, but they also fought with immigrants of other nationalities, with each other, and with whomever else they were thrown up against in the marketplace." In other words, it wasn't that the Irish were inherently more racist than any other group. Instead, the race riots when rowdy Irish attacked African Americans were largely in response to an economic condition arising in early US capitalism: Northern industrial labor markets were saturated by waves of immigrants and freed slaves competing over lower and lower wages. To secure jobs for themselves, the Irish became the hammer that pounded away at racial segregation to force African Americans out of the factories and into poverty and the ghetto.

By doing so, they also solidified the major distinction between relatively privileged sectors of the US working class and those on the bottom - "Whiteness". Ignatiev explains: "Since 'white' was not a physical description but one term of a social relation which could not exist without its opposite, 'white man's work' was simply, work from which Afro-Americans were excluded."


Much of the book centers in Philadelphia, which made this book doubly relevant for me. Ignatiev explores how Irishmen found employment in Philly by systematically excluding Blacks from any workplaces they were involved in: they simply refused to work with Blacks. When this wasn't enough, they also used terror to suppress the Black population.

The racial warfare which occurred throughout Philly was really quite drastic: Black churches, homes, and businesses were regularly attacked and burned during the 19th century. Irish-Americans formed themselves into private "fire companies" who were basically gangs who competed with other fire companies by setting fires in their territory, then attacking the firemen. These same gangs soon involved themselves in Democratic Party machine politics by stuffing ballot boxes, roughing up potential voters, and putting forth Irish candidates for offices. The extreme violence and corruption shocked me at first, but in fact explains quite a lot about the current reality of Philadelphia, which remains racially tense and divided to this day.


This is not an easy book to read. Ignatiev uses a lot of primary sources so the language can be difficult. Worse though is that he often refrains from making his points clearly and directly, instead drawing you into long stories that only tangentially explain his key thesis. Nevertheless, with a subject-matter as compelling as this, the book can be gripping, and I highly recommend it.

To overcome the racial barriers of today and tomorrow, we need to learn from the mistakes of the past. Specifically, we are forced to wonder, how can we overcome centuries of racism in America? What does the election of a Black Democrat for President explain about the arc of US politics, and what challenges does it present? Is Ignatiev right that a free society can only be achieved on this land when "Whiteness" ceases to be a social category used to privilege one group of workers over another?


In any case, studying our troubled and dark history is the only way to escape it and open a door to a different reality. As we take that intellectual journey we may also discover who we really are...

"On August 11, 1854, the Liberator [newspaper:] published a letter from a Maine correspondent who wrote, 'passage to the United States seems to produce the same effect upon the exile of Erin as the eating of the forbidden fruit did upon Adam and Eve. In the morning hey were pure, loving, and innocent; in the evening, guilty - excusing their fault with the plea of expecting advantage to follow faithfulness.'"

[Allison Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

How the Irish Became White provides a glimpse at the social evolution of the Irish in the years surrounding the Civil War, as they transitioned from an oppressed and unwelcome social class, to members of the white racial class.

The Irish in Ireland faced numerous troubles in the early 19th Century. They were impoverished farmers who were determined to break free from England’s tyranny. But once they finally emigrated to the United States, something unexpected happened; they were faced with a new society which was entirely based on racial segregation and industrial capitalism. Additionally, a “Nativist” movement attempted to subdue Irish/Catholic influence in the New World.

In order to overcome their new-found barriers, the Irish made a decision to escape the bottom-rung of poverty and to be fully accepted into mainstream society by aggressively aligning themselves with the Democratic Party; while simultaneously doing everything they could to keep African Americans in slavery and/or out of the labor market. In doing so, they earned the right to be considered “white” and receive the benefits and privileges associated with that social category.

As an Irish-American, I feel that it is important to learn about the true legacy of mass emigration of the Irish to America, and additionally, the meaning of “whiteness”. Ignatiev makes a strong case that Irish immigrants were willing to work extremely hard in order to pull themselves out of their severe poverty. The Irish were notorious for sparking “race riots” in which they would adherently attack African Americans. What I found interesting, and believe Ignatiev did a good job portraying, is that the race riots were actually in response to the economic condition of US capitalism. The labor markets in the North were being oversaturated with immigrants and freed slaves alike, driving wages lower and lower. In order to secure jobs, the Irish embedded themselves in the fight for racial segregation; hoping to force African Americans out of the factories and further into poverty.

The decision by the Irish to support segregation solidified the major distinction between somewhat privileged sectors of the US social and working classes from those on the bottom i.e. “Whiteness”. Ignatiev explains: “Since ‘white’ was not a physical description but one term of a social relation which could not exist without its opposite, ‘white man’s work’ was simply, work from which Afro-Americans were excluded.”
To be completely honest, the extreme violence and corruption shocked me at first, but ultimately it does in fact explain quite a lot about the current realities of Philadelphia, which remains racially tense and divided to this day.

I found that this is not an easy book to read. Ignatiev uses a lot of primary sources which makes the language somewhat difficult at times. What I found most challenging is that he often refrains from making his points clearly and directly, but rather draws you into long stories that only explain his primary thesis. Nevertheless, with a subject as intriguing as the early times of Irish in America, the book can be gripping, and I would highly recommend it.

[Mary]

I only got to about page 60 in this weird, academic tome. I feel like I should understand what the author is trying to get across at this point, but I don't. It may come together later in the book, but I don't care enough to continue.

[Gina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't remember where I saw this book recommended initially, but having finished up some reading on African American history, and having had some questions on how we perceive race from the White Santa debacle (http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/12/...), this seemed like a reasonable reading choice. I was really disappointed.

At first it was just kind of underwhelming. There would be some interesting information, often horrific, but it was generally hard to focus because it was boring and when he occasionally tried to get flowery it felt artificial. It was the sort of thing where you wish for a different writing style or better editing, but the book was short so I was going to stick with it. Then I got to the afterword, and read one of the stupidest things I have ever read:

"The reader will note that I have written a book about racial oppression without using the term 'racism'. I consider the term useless...The sooner the term is retired, the better it will be for clear thinking all around."

What the ellipsis hides is a reference to Barbara J. Fields' commentary on the term, saying that racism "has been devalued to mean little more than a personal preference for one complexion over another."

I wanted to separate those quotes, because I don't want to blame Ignatiev for Fields' quote, but that he uses it and appears influenced by it may explain how he came to such an asinine conclusion. I have never seen the word "racism" used the way Fields describes. There are certainly differences to how some people use it, but there is a very real racism that is a problem, and taking away the vocabulary to speak about it will impede clear thinking, not benefit it. There could be an ivory tower isolationism going on, leading to naivete, but it is pretty common for people who want to uphold the status quo, where there is not only racism but racial (and racist) inequality, to use the same kind of reasoning. So that leads to suspicions about his motives, but he just wrote a book about racial oppression and did not seem to be in favor of it. Really, I'm flummoxed.

Then the best bit of writing comes two paragraphs after it, comparing the literature left from the period by both Irish and African Americans:

"perhaps it reflects a perception that the striving of the Negro for full freedom carried within itself the vision of a new world for everyone, while the assimilation of the Irish into white America meant merely more of the same."

And yes, that was evident in what the book had been saying all along, but now you're going to say something succinctly and well? Couldn't you have been doing that all along?

So I was surprised to see so many positive reviews, but one other kind of negative review mentioned another book that handled it better, Allen's The Invention of the White Race, so I guess I will eventually try that.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ignatiev has gotten a lot of crap from people saying he paints the Irish as a bunch of racist assholes but I didn't see that in this history of the creation of the white race. I think that he covers a fair amount of ground, hitting on issues of race, class, and a small bit of gender (though not much).

While whiteness as a historical study might be a fading fad, this book is absolutely important for any socially conscious person. If you claim Irish ancestry, don't buy into the neg hype - to truly embrace your heritage you have to take the bad with the good. Go read something about the Molly Maguires if you need to feel better.

[Katy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spectacular topic. Well researched. One of the worst written academic books I have read. (And I've read a lot.) Totally disappointing.

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Brit looking to apply for Irish citizenship, the meaning of Irishness has been weighing on my mind in recent months. My first unfortunate encounter with Irish identity came when I was 11 or 12 years old and my mum told me that I had not been bestowed her Irish surname because she was afraid that it would lead to me being bullied at school. It has only been in the last couple of decades that the Irish have become fully accepted within British culture.

In the United States the story was very different. By the turn of the 20th century, Catholic Irish-Americans (as distinct from the Protestant Scots-Irish, who generally integrated in a similar manner to British immigrants) had become an integral part of economic and political life in cities and town across the nation. Although anti-Catholic sentiment remained widespread enough to cast doubt on the viability of John F. Kennedy’s run for the presidency in 1960, no one questioned the respectability of his Irish ancestry.

How the Irish Became White provocatively claims that Irish achieved this breakthrough in the United States through fervent support for the colour line. Despite their first-hand experience of caste prejudice in their home country, the Irish became staunch defenders of slavery in the South and agitators for the repression of free blacks in the North. In a bid to establish themselves as part of the elite white race, the Irish became America’s most egregious racial oppressors.

While Ignatiev finds much to despise in the way Irish immigrants turned against their black peers, he is not unsympathetic to the Irish plight. He writes in the conclusion that ‘in the course of my research I learned that no one gave a damn for the poor Irish. Even the downtrodden black people had Quakers and abolitionists to bring their plight to public attention.’ The repression of blacks was a strategic choice made by an impoverished group on the fringes of a brutally competitive and uncaring society.

The first part of the book explores how the Irish diaspora came to see race as a mechanism for its own advancement in the United States. Here, Ignatiev stresses the significance of the path not taken in the form of Daniel O’Connell, a leading Irish politician and campaigner for Catholic emancipation, who befriended Frederick Douglass and provoked outrage in the South by calling for the abolition of slavery. O’Connell’s efforts to inculcate abolitionism amongst the Irish created a sharp divide in the community, many of whom feared a nativist backlash against these immigrant agitators.

As vast numbers of Irish arrived in the 1840s, they not only pushed blacks out of key trades, but also seized power in the outlying slum districts of many American cities. Irish-dominated gangs, operating under the cover of being volunteer fire departments, ransacked black areas and enforced racial segregation codes. By the 1850s, American Irish politicians such as Philadelphia’s William McCullen had established themselves as pillars of the pro-slavery Democrat establishment.

This book is far from flawless. Much of it reads like the first draft of a PhD thesis—the basic content is there but without a discernible structure or coherent argument. Some chapters get lost in the fine grain detail of the political and personal conflicts within the Irish diaspora. The later chapters focus almost exclusively on Philadelphia, leaving the reader wondering how representative of the broader Irish experience they really are. Indeed, Ignatiev admits that the sources for his research were so limited that he had to build the story ‘like a palaeontologist who builds a dinosaur from a tooth’. The reader must thus treat it as a first tentative account of a complex era.

Perhaps the greatest problem with the book is the expectation created by its (admittedly brilliant) title. The thesis that the Irish were once not perceived as white is an extraordinarily claim that requires extraordinary evidence. At the very least, it requires a clear definition of whiteness and a systematic survey of instances where the Irish were denied the privileges of being white. Ignatiev provides neither. Indeed, probably because there is no actual evidence that they were seen as non-white, he barely mentions racial perceptions of the Irish. Instead, the question the book is actually interested in is how the Irish became white supremacists. Still interesting, but obviously far less provocative as a subject.

The afterword section suggests that Ignatiev wanted to position How the Irish Became White as a salvo against progressive labour historians who, he believed, had consistently neglected racial conflict in favour of a narrative that emphasises colour-blind class conflict. In 2016 we saw similar critiques of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Books like this are an important reminder that the issue of race can cut across progressive causes in uncomfortable ways. While many will find Ignatiev’s call to ‘abolish the white race’ bizarre and absurd, we must begin to at least reckon with what the pursuit of whiteness has historically entailed.

P.S. My decision to buy and read this book is a testament to the marketing power of a good title. Also, I love the Routledge cover with a foamy pint of Guinness on the front.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good information to support an important premise but so poorly organized and edited that it becomes frustrating to read. Mainly covers the Irish and Black people during the nineteenth century in and around Philadelphia with many digressions and not much theoretical grounding to show how what happened in Philly was more universally the case. A sloppy book, full of important facts but not well enough contextualized to hold one's interest.
--------------------------------

A second look at “How the Irish Became White”

The important content of Ignatiev’s books is disguised by and embedded in a lot of stylistic quirks, some of which seem due to lack of editing. For example several chapters begin with “this chapter will show” and end with “this chapter has shown” although less has been shown that the author thought. It has some of the hallmarks of a successful dissertation that has been turned into a book but without the editorial care necessary for such a work.

However his arguments, even is not felicitously made, are worth considering. One is that the Irish in America were pro-slavery both for economic reasons--in the north they were one precarious, slippery step above free black labor on the class ladder and had significant economic reasons to fear black workers replacing them, a fear exploited by employers. It is ironic since the Irish in Ireland were in almost the same position as blacks in America. In a footnote Ignatiev points out the similarities between the infamous dictum of Judge Taney in the Dred Scott case that “The Negro has no rights the a white man is bound to respect” and two court cases in England that held that “The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic”, so that anything could be done to such a person while not breaking the law. Indeed they were lumped in nativist propaganda as White Negroes and Smoked Irish.

They were also pro-slavery in order to be “American”, which meant in middle of the nineteenth century to be other than Native American or Black. The Irish had rights in the United States that were denied them in Ireland by their English masters--they could vote, hold office, own property and go to school but to be really accepted (or feel they were) the Irish had to differentiate themselves from an underclass and therefore create themselves as better than and over people of color who had many of the same class interests.

Ignatiev is not a very graceful writer but he knows his sources, both primary and secondary, and deploys them well if repetitively. One is “Invention of the White Race” by Theodore Allen. Ignatiev follows Allen in his distinction between racial and national oppression--it turns on the composition of the group that enforces elite rule: under a system of national oppression such as the English imposed on India the conquering power implements its dominance by incorporating sections of the elite classes of the subject population into the ruling apparatus--the non-coms of the Indian Army for example or the Indian functionaries in the bureaucracy. Under a system of racial oppression, the elite rule rests solely on the supports of the laboring classes of the oppressed group--this was as true in Ireland in the 1840s as it was in the American south, although the Irish, of course, could and did leave in great numbers.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to give up on this book for a second time, which was a bummer. The subject is very interesting and I really wanted to get through to the conclusion but the writing is just so - dry, dense, not as punchy as the title would suggest (which is a bit whatever the print equivalent of "click-baity" is, I admit.) Maybe I'm just out of practice reading more "historical" as it were, histories, and I did have a few 'a-ha' moments in the first three chapters I got through, but trying to get through all the copious detail on every Irish/Irish-American politician and his role and opinions on the matters of abolition, Repeal and so on felt like a chore - something I'm interested in but not an entire book's worth necessarily. I think I envisioned the focus being more on the socioeconomics of Irish immigrants in America and their experiences juxtaposed with those of black Americans and other immigrant groups but the point of view is much more narrow and political - which makes sense but like I said just not as interesting to me - and if it does expand its POV it happens much too late in the book in my opinion. I would be interested to find another book around this same idea but handled much differently, but I've yet to see one (suggestions welcome!)

[Andy Mcloughlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book whose shortcomings are compounded by its lack of originality. How the Irish Became White offers few insights which are not contained in the corresponding chapter in David Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness and in fact omits crucial detail around the Native American experience which is captured in Fintan O’Toole’s The Lie of the Land. Substituted for genuine insight is 100 pages of winding, tedious anecdotes which do little to illustrate the concepts under discussion. It earns its second star by being technically correct, but you really should just read another book instead.

[DoctorM · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written account of how Irish immigrants--- despised both in English-ruled Ireland and in Anglo-Saxon America as Catholic, uncivilised, and barely English-speaking ---became "white". Ignatiev looks to the all-too-human need of any oppressed group to find someone farther down the totem pole and to the way in which elites used race as a wedge to keep poor whites separate from and hostile to blacks both slave and free. A telling account of racial politics in the antebellum years.

[Cnochur · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a shame that this book is so painfully boring, because the subject matter is a vital one. I hope one day a historian with...say, David McCullough's ability to bring the subject to life can tackle the story of how the Irish, once as spat upon by white America as blacks, clawed their way to acceptance into white society. THAT would alter people's understanding of race and history in America for the better. This one's strictly for the academics.

[joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ignatiev is a master of whiteness studies. The development of different racial attitudes and identities between the Irish and Irish Americans is sad. Great read if you are wondering how certain groups became white, or if you thought that all people from Europe were always considered white in the US.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

SO BORING. This is such an interesting subject, but the writing is so dry that it reads more like the worst text book you've ever had. You can still manage to get something out of it, but it certainly isn't easy.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Atrociously written and tenuously reasoned. The sheepishly positive three star reviews on here - which I suppose are written out of some vague sense of obligation to the book's political intonation - can barely conceal this fact.

[John]

Great concept, deep historical backing, but way too much random detail and academic patina that should have been scraped off before shipping this to print.

Imagine one hundred more passages like this one:

“Jefferson showed that he was aware of the danger, when he noted that the “wholesome” “party divisions of whig and tory” served to “keep out those of a more dangerous character.” His famous “firebell in the night” remark, then, wherein he warned that “a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated,” was as much, if not more, a reiteration of his opposition to placing the slave question on the national agenda as it was a meditation on the immorality of slavery.”

Or this:

“Binns arrived in Baltimore, then a major port for southeastern Pennsylvania, on September 1, 1801, after a sea voyage of nine weeks. Kept away from the city by reports of yellow fever, the passengers stopped at a hotel a mile out of town. Binns later recalled, “What with bull-frogs, common frogs, tidetids, etc. etc., and negro huts, in which there was much shouting, screaming, and clapping of hands, my ears never before had been assailed by such a multitude of confused, unusual, and unmusical sounds.… At the hotel where we stopped, for the first time I ate cakes made of that delicious vegetable, Indian corn.” The next day, he set off on foot, accompanied by three wagons loaded with supplies he had brought with him. On his arrival in Harrisburg he hired a boat to carry him and his supplies to Northumberland, a lively commercial town on the Susquehanna River”

Editors are great things. I was not up to the task on this one, regrettably.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have given up (at least for the time being) on reading this book, which I thought would be interesting, despite the title. The thing is though, that Noel Ignatiev doesn’t show much understanding of Irish history. What the Irish anti-Black riots he describes in so much detail remind me of is the centuries of anti-Catholic sectarian violence in Ulster described in such detail by Andrew Boyd in Holy war in Belfast;: A history of the troubles in Northern Ireland, an excellent book but not easy to stomach. Ignatiev doesn't mention Thomas Francis Meagher, a hero in Ireland in 1848 and an abolitionist who commanded the Irish Brigade in the US Civil War.

Ignatiev's section on the 1898 failed revolution in Ireland read like he got the material from the excellent. but somewhat skewed novel. The Year of the French.

Just another Woke book pushing "Critical Race Theory."

Read James Connolly, a great labor leader and the founder of Irish Marxism: Labour in Irish History and The Reconquest of Ireland.

[Art · Rating 3 out of 5]

History is best written if it retells the story of the past to explain how we all got to where we are now. Noel Ignatiev's, "How the Irish Became White", is one of those books where the present is illuminated by the past. He attempts to explain how Irish Americans embraced the privileges of their "whiteness" in the United States over against the plight of their African-American urban neighbors and against the cause of the abolitionists, in order to cast off the scorn of their oppressed existence in Ireland and as despised emigrants in the New Republic. Ignatiev draws from a host of primary resources from writings of key Irish-American political leaders, labor leaders, journalists, and even religious leaders to press his point. Stringing together letters, literature, lithographs, and lyrics with this theme, Ignatiev does seem to get somewhat jumbled with the abundance of resources packed into his book. However, his work makes this book indispensable as a researcher's platform for further historical analysis on the subject. Of notable importance is Ignatiev's extensive analysis on race and labor relations in the Philadelphia area in this book. Ignatiev's book is best read as a historian's attempt to fill in where other historians have been silent: how Irish-Americans ignored or participated in the oppression of people of color in the United States to their own advantage. As an American with an Irish heritage living in Philadelphia, I would highly recommend this book to supplement other more mainstream histories of our difficult past.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a mixed bag. As a whole it was worth reading.

Sitting where it does, having been published 25 years before Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, it felt foundational and perhaps forgotten.

It starts rough, and was easy to put down. And pieces of this were a real slog to read - in particular the afterword, and I love me a good afterword - so that was a disappointment.

And the title was kind of misleading. The title implied to me that this book was going to be about how society as a whole would start treating the Irish as White rather than other.

Instead this was really the journey of the American Irish population, primarily unskilled laborers taking over the free Negro niche as the cheapest most desperate laborers and then choosing to identify as white rather than Irish and building the American Labor movement, keeping colored people out of it.

There really wasn't much about the manipulation by those with money to keep the poor at each others throats. Most of the blame fell on the desperate uneducated American Irish.

And there was a lot of labor history. And Philadelphia history. And corruption and violence, in particular violence between the Irish and everyone else including the Irish.

An interesting book, but not a great one.