suicidalmarchingband
03-09-2004, 09:10 PM
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/racism.gif
During the nineteenth century theories of race were advanced both by the scientific community and in the popular daily and periodical press. Even before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the old concept of the great chain of being, marking the gradations of mankind, was being subjected to a new scientific racism. The "science "of phrenology purported to demonstrate that the structure of the skull, especially the jaw formation and facial angles, revealed the position of various races on the evolutionary scale, and a debate raged on whether there had been one creation for all mankind (monogenism) or several (polygenism). "To a large extent, the story of racial science in Britain between 1800 and 1850," Nancy Stepan writes "is the story of desperate efforts to rebut polygenism and the eventual acceptance of popular quasi-polygenist prejudices in the language of science" (30). Polygenists stressed the unequal nature of the various creations and this theory mingled with general evolutionary theories and concepts of arrested development to create an atmosphere congenial to racial stereotyping.
In much of the pseudo-scientific literature of the day the Irish were held to be inferior, an example of a lower evolutionary form, closer to the apes than their "superiors", the Anglo-Saxons . Cartoons in Punch portrayed the Irish as having bestial, ape-like or demonic features and the Irishman, (especially the political radical) was invariably given a long or prognathous jaw, the stigmata to the phrenologists of a lower evolutionary order, degeneracy, or criminality. Thus John Beddoe, who later became the President of the Anthropological Institute (1889-1891), wrote in his Races of Britain (1862) that all men of genius were orthognathous (less prominent jaw bones) while the Irish and the Welsh were prognathous and that the Celt was closely related to Cromagnon man, who, in turn, was linked, according to Beddoe, to the "Africanoid". The position of the Celt in Beddoe's "Index of Nigrescence" was very different from that of the Anglo-Saxon. These ideas were not confined to a lunatic fringe of the scientific community, for although they never won over the mainstream of British scientists they were disseminated broadly and it was even hinted that the Irish might be the elusive missing link! Certainly the "ape-like" Celt became something of an malevolent cliche of Victorian racism. Thus Charles Kingsley could write
I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . ."
(Charles Kingsley in a letter to his wife, quoted in L.P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts, p.84).
Even seemingly complimentary generalizations about the Irish national character could, in the Victorian context, be damaging to the Celt. Thus, following the work of Ernest Renan's La Poésie des Races Celtiques (1854), it was broadly argued that the Celt was poetic, light-hearted and imaginative, highly emotional, playful, passionate, and sentimental. But these were characteristics the Victorians also associated with children. Thus the Irish were "immature" and in need of guidance by others, more highly developed than themselves. Irish "emotion" was contrasted, unfavorably, with English "reason", Irish "femininity" with English "masculine" virtues, Irish "poetic" attributes with English "pragmatism". These were all arguments which conveniently supported British rule in Ireland.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/race/Racism.html
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/scientific.gif
"Scientific Racism" from an American magazine, Harper’s Weekly , shows that the Irish are similar to Negroes, and should be extinct!
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html
http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/irish/images/PRO-Irish-Frankenstein.jpg
The Irish Frankenstein Punch 20 May 1882
The Anthropological Review and Journal of 1866 claimed that "Gaelic man" was characterised by "his bulging jaw and lower part of the face, retreating chin and forehead, large mouth and thick lips, great distance between nose and mouth, upturned nose, prominent cheekbones, sunken eyes, projecting eyebrows, narrow elongated skull and protruding ears". This sort of "scientific" racism was not uncommon in the nineteenth century and was also directed against Jewish and African people. "Without intending offence", stated an article on the London Irish in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of July 1901, "we would point to this common feature in the Hibernian and Negro idiosyncrasy, that a dull manhood follows upon a youth of the highest promise". This "no offence, but -" introductory remark always heralds a statement that will be offensive and is one commonly experienced by migrant groups.
http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/irish/settling/racism_prejudice_1.htm
Interview with the author of How the Irish Became White.
What my book is about is how an earlier group of immigrants, the Catholic Irish--the first non-Protestant, non-Anglo group of European immigrants to arrive, at the beginning of the 19th century, around the period when industrialization was beginning to take place--learned the American racial set-up and found their place in it.
When I say that the Irish "became" white what I hark back to is that in Ireland the Catholics were victims of a kind of discrimination which in many respects was parallel and analogous to what we, in the United States, call racial discrimination-although there's no visible, physical type difference between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Notwithstanding this, if there were any people who were racially oppressed in Ireland it was the Catholics, who then came to the United States and found a new situation in which there was a color line--something they weren't familiar with, something they had no experience with. It was something they had to learn. They had to learn what it meant, how it operated, and how to find their own place in it.
So what I'm really talking about is how the Irish went from being members of an oppressed race in Ireland to being members of an oppressing race in the United States. The period that the book covers begins in the 1790s and closes in 1877, but the real heart of the book is the 1830s and 1840s, when I think the decisive elements fell into place.
http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/articles/jan97postel.htm
During the nineteenth century theories of race were advanced both by the scientific community and in the popular daily and periodical press. Even before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the old concept of the great chain of being, marking the gradations of mankind, was being subjected to a new scientific racism. The "science "of phrenology purported to demonstrate that the structure of the skull, especially the jaw formation and facial angles, revealed the position of various races on the evolutionary scale, and a debate raged on whether there had been one creation for all mankind (monogenism) or several (polygenism). "To a large extent, the story of racial science in Britain between 1800 and 1850," Nancy Stepan writes "is the story of desperate efforts to rebut polygenism and the eventual acceptance of popular quasi-polygenist prejudices in the language of science" (30). Polygenists stressed the unequal nature of the various creations and this theory mingled with general evolutionary theories and concepts of arrested development to create an atmosphere congenial to racial stereotyping.
In much of the pseudo-scientific literature of the day the Irish were held to be inferior, an example of a lower evolutionary form, closer to the apes than their "superiors", the Anglo-Saxons . Cartoons in Punch portrayed the Irish as having bestial, ape-like or demonic features and the Irishman, (especially the political radical) was invariably given a long or prognathous jaw, the stigmata to the phrenologists of a lower evolutionary order, degeneracy, or criminality. Thus John Beddoe, who later became the President of the Anthropological Institute (1889-1891), wrote in his Races of Britain (1862) that all men of genius were orthognathous (less prominent jaw bones) while the Irish and the Welsh were prognathous and that the Celt was closely related to Cromagnon man, who, in turn, was linked, according to Beddoe, to the "Africanoid". The position of the Celt in Beddoe's "Index of Nigrescence" was very different from that of the Anglo-Saxon. These ideas were not confined to a lunatic fringe of the scientific community, for although they never won over the mainstream of British scientists they were disseminated broadly and it was even hinted that the Irish might be the elusive missing link! Certainly the "ape-like" Celt became something of an malevolent cliche of Victorian racism. Thus Charles Kingsley could write
I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . ."
(Charles Kingsley in a letter to his wife, quoted in L.P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts, p.84).
Even seemingly complimentary generalizations about the Irish national character could, in the Victorian context, be damaging to the Celt. Thus, following the work of Ernest Renan's La Poésie des Races Celtiques (1854), it was broadly argued that the Celt was poetic, light-hearted and imaginative, highly emotional, playful, passionate, and sentimental. But these were characteristics the Victorians also associated with children. Thus the Irish were "immature" and in need of guidance by others, more highly developed than themselves. Irish "emotion" was contrasted, unfavorably, with English "reason", Irish "femininity" with English "masculine" virtues, Irish "poetic" attributes with English "pragmatism". These were all arguments which conveniently supported British rule in Ireland.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/race/Racism.html
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/scientific.gif
"Scientific Racism" from an American magazine, Harper’s Weekly , shows that the Irish are similar to Negroes, and should be extinct!
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html
http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/irish/images/PRO-Irish-Frankenstein.jpg
The Irish Frankenstein Punch 20 May 1882
The Anthropological Review and Journal of 1866 claimed that "Gaelic man" was characterised by "his bulging jaw and lower part of the face, retreating chin and forehead, large mouth and thick lips, great distance between nose and mouth, upturned nose, prominent cheekbones, sunken eyes, projecting eyebrows, narrow elongated skull and protruding ears". This sort of "scientific" racism was not uncommon in the nineteenth century and was also directed against Jewish and African people. "Without intending offence", stated an article on the London Irish in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of July 1901, "we would point to this common feature in the Hibernian and Negro idiosyncrasy, that a dull manhood follows upon a youth of the highest promise". This "no offence, but -" introductory remark always heralds a statement that will be offensive and is one commonly experienced by migrant groups.
http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/irish/settling/racism_prejudice_1.htm
Interview with the author of How the Irish Became White.
What my book is about is how an earlier group of immigrants, the Catholic Irish--the first non-Protestant, non-Anglo group of European immigrants to arrive, at the beginning of the 19th century, around the period when industrialization was beginning to take place--learned the American racial set-up and found their place in it.
When I say that the Irish "became" white what I hark back to is that in Ireland the Catholics were victims of a kind of discrimination which in many respects was parallel and analogous to what we, in the United States, call racial discrimination-although there's no visible, physical type difference between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Notwithstanding this, if there were any people who were racially oppressed in Ireland it was the Catholics, who then came to the United States and found a new situation in which there was a color line--something they weren't familiar with, something they had no experience with. It was something they had to learn. They had to learn what it meant, how it operated, and how to find their own place in it.
So what I'm really talking about is how the Irish went from being members of an oppressed race in Ireland to being members of an oppressing race in the United States. The period that the book covers begins in the 1790s and closes in 1877, but the real heart of the book is the 1830s and 1840s, when I think the decisive elements fell into place.
http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/articles/jan97postel.htm