I was going to write a post about what being part-Irish means to me, but then I realized that it doesn't mean much of anything. All I can do is ramble and ramble about how there are all these cultural myths (and yes, I have noticed this about other cultures, too) that bloom in America and don't add up to much when you meet someone from the motherland.
I saw a TV news program that claimed that more Americans had a German ancestor than anything else. Irish was second. English third. They did admit, however, that since there were so many illegal Hispanic immigrants, it is hard to know how these rankings could change if we had a totally honest census.
I was never sure what to think of being Irish. I am not Catholic, though both sides of the family had a few ancestors from counties in Ireland that were largely Catholic. The people in my family who had the most Irish in them did generally have the storied bad temper and propensity for alcoholism and depression and other mental problems, but who the hell knows where this comes from? We are a little too mixed to blame the Irish for this, and the people in my family who hailed from other countries had some or all of these traits, too. The way you pick a mate in my family is to say, "Hey, are you fucked up? Really? Let's have some kids! And what is your name again?"
Irish-Irish people I have met have said that the whole Irish-people-have-red-hair thing is crap, though red hair and black hair--never brown or blond--run through the Irish folk in my family. The Aryans, for whom Ireland is supposedly named, spread from India to Ireland and in between. Go back far enough, and we are all related to everyone on earth, so I am leery of the easy cultural associations. Was the red hair a Viking DNA dump? What does it mean to be 'black Irish'? I hear and read varying versions of these things. An English lawyer supposedly wrote the words to "Danny boy." I did read on a magazine from a plane (so it MUST be true) that even if the Irish colonize other places, they still have a higher rate of suicide than surrounding cultures, and this is supposed to mimic the rate in Ireland. Whatever. I don't know. If you had to eat all that mercilessly boiled food and listen to sopranos wailing about bogs, you would kill yourself, too. I give up. This is a pointless post that I will soon delete. Let me find some liquor or an oppressive English person to rail against.
It is St. Patrick's Day, and I am not even wearing green.
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You really cracked me up with this one,
The way you pick a mate in my family is to say, "Hey, are you fucked up? Really? Let's have some kids! And what is your name again? My name is Mike. Glad to meet you!
(The guy on the other side of my cube wall thinks I laugh for no reason.)
I' m half German and ridiculously, irrationally proud of it, but I have no idea what a "German" is like. I suspect these stereotypes are there for a reason, though. I honestly do believe in the idea of a zeitgeist made up of ingredient folk-spirits. Thing is, they're all mixed up together now and at an increasingly accelerated, American-overlaid rate. Mishmash. The Great Blending is upon Us....
rated, Jim
Rated for one's ancestry
me, i look forward every year to a chance to drunkenly mangle "danny boy" right before i blow green vomit all over the sidewalk. it seems like a fitting tribute to our celtic heritage, even though the irish in me is actually scots protestant and i wouldn't know what a bog was if it crawled up my ass.
When first coming here, the Irish faced terrible discrimination. Job posters actually stated, "No Irish Need Apply". Historians now agree that the labor movement was probably delayed for decades in this nation due to the Irish willingness to work for any wage.
But the Irish knew and understood that no one would help them, so they had to help themselves. They established schools, cultural organizations, on and on, and for many decades, any Irish coming here could find a network of Irish willing to help him find work, a place to live, and so on.
But most impressive is the fact that in the 1840s, the Irish faced prejudice and discrimination, yet by the turn of the century, they controlled Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and I think, Baltimore, too, as well as Chicago. A few decades later, the reigning stars of Hollywood included James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, on and on, all Irish-Americans.
Furthermore, it was the Irish and African-Americans who physically built this nation, the roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, skyscrapers, etc. But for the Irish to completely overcome prejudice and discrimination to the point of total assimilation, within less than a century, is a feat that few discriminated-against groups every achieve!
I am putting this on a T-Shirt. You coined it, sister!