TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2022, ETHNICITY IN AMERICA

 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2022 - ETHNICITY IN AMERICA

Yesterday, we celebrated two diverse groups in the United States - Italian Americans (with Columbus Day), and Native Americans (with Indigenous People's Day) 

We (America) have been called a country of immigrants and a diverse country.  

When I taught at Quinnipiac University we had three vacation days (in addition to the standard holidays);  In the fall we celebrated Yom Kippur for our Jewish Students; we celebrated Martin Luther King for our Black Students, and we celebrated Good Friday for our Christian Students.  Plus the standard days - Labor Day for American Workers, Thanksgiving for all of us, Christmas (as part of the semester break), New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July.  There were classes on Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, and President’s Day, but with speakers and programs on campus.

Spring break was generally scheduled around St. Patrick’s Day.  (But one year St.Patrick’s Day fell after spring break.  The campus celebrated its Irish heritage (or really, the Irish heritage of many of its students and graduates) by participating in the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade.  Our University President (now retired) was of Irish heritage and even served as the Grand Marshall of the parade and on the board of directors of the parade.  The campus was about 75 miles from New York City and chartered luxury buses (not school buses and ones with a bathroom and televisions) to take the faculty/staff/alumni in the area to the parade (free).  We walked (“marched” is maybe too strong of a term) in the parade with alumni from the New York Area.  (We maybe had 500 to 800 people in our group).  After the parade, the university sponsored a free reception at a major New York City Hotel (frequently the Waldorf-Astoria). 

The parade was televised on New York Channels (advertisers wanted to get their ads in front of this important market segment).  There were thousands of police units, bands, bagpipers, Irish dancers, schools, and universities.

The slogan is: “On St. Patrick’s Day, we’re all Irish”

*****

But, that wasn’t always the case.

From the History Channel https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis 

“The refugees seeking haven in America were poor and disease-ridden. They threatened to take jobs away from Americans and strain welfare budgets. They practiced an alien religion and pledged allegiance to a foreign leader. They were bringing with them crime. They were accused of being rapists. And, worst of all, these undesirables were Irish”

In the 1840s, the Irish Potato Famine (also called “The Great Hunger”) ravished Ireland.

(Again from the History Channel):

“Through seven terrible years of famine, Ireland’s poetic landscape authored tales of the macabre. Barefoot mothers with clothes dripping from their bodies clutched dead infants in their arms as they begged for food. Wild dogs searching for food fed on human corpses. The country’s legendary 40 shades of green stained the lips of the starving who fed on tufts of grass in a futile attempt for survival. Desperate farmers sprinkled their crops with holy water, and hollow figures with eyes as empty as their stomachs scraped Ireland’s stubbled fields with calloused hands searching for one, just one, healthy potato. Typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis, and cholera tore through the countryside as horses maintained a constant march carting spent bodies to mass graves.”

“Ireland’s population was nearly halved by the time the potato blight abated in 1852. While approximately 1 million perished, another 2 million abandoned the land that had abandoned them in the largest-single population movement of the 19th century. Most of the exiles—nearly a quarter of the Irish nation—washed up on the shores of the United States. They knew little about America except for one thing: It had to be better than the hell that was searing Ireland.”

And, the backlash from Americans was generally negative.  They decried that America was a Protestant Country and that these “Papists” didn’t belong here.  The Irish turned to the “dirty jobs” - ditch digging, slaughterhouses, and things that the existing Americans didn’t do.  It was also slavery in a different format.  

The “Know Nothing” group was an amalgamation of several groups opposed to the Irish.  The Know Nothings “vowed to elect only native-born citizens—but only if they weren’t Roman Catholic”.They believed that Protestantism defined American society.

*****

As we look at immigration (and non-immigration in terms of Native Americans), this country has been less than hospitable to newcomers.  

The Italians (with Columbus Day yesterday), the Irish (today), Blacks, Hispanics, Chineses, Polish, Asians, and others encountered difficulties when looking for freedom from hunger, and for a better life and found hatred.

Let me close with “The New Colossus” poem by Emma Lazarus - the poem on the Statue of Liberty:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

*****

YES - let’s act on the promise of the poem:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Let us fervently remember LOVE WINS.  

Karen Anne White, October 11, 2022, ©