Because White Skin Must Be Earned

[mrdankelly]

Ah, my people. The South Side Irish.The Irish are great freedom-fighters. The only problem is that for many of them freedom-fighting started and stopped with the sons and daughters of the auld sod. You see, our freedom was hard won. We "earned" our trip out of subjugation and slavery. Therefore, everyone else on the bottom still has to swim through

Comments

[buscemi]

And don't forget to stay away from "those" neighborhoods after dark. ;)

[sclerotic_rings]

Trust me: they don't have to be Irish. My father gets a regular kick out of going back to Hazel Crest and Country Club Hills, just so he can bitch to his heart's content about how the whole area went "straight to hell" (i.e., allowed black families to move in) after we moved out in 1979. This is in addition to practically bragging about how the suburbs of Detroit (including Dearborn, where he was born) went to shit after the whites moved "to better things." Oh, he's conciliatory in public, but the moment prying ears are gone, whammo.

Incidentally, this same sort of attitude is leading to quite a bit of entertainment here in Dallas. We're probably three years away from our sole daily newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, dying on us, and nobody at its parent company, Belo, can understand why. The paper spent decades on bashing the hell out of anyone who wasn't old, white, Protestant, and rich: women were allowed into the club so long as they recognized their subservient position and stuck to school fundraisers, but they'd damn

[wanderingaengus]

How the Irish Became White is a good book.

Here's a good creepy-old-Irish-American-relative story. When my great-aunt died, among her jewelry was a gold swastika charm for a charm bracelet. It was a gift from a boyfriend back in the 30s.