The case that No Irish Need Apply was less common than you think And it's made them a continued ally for immigrants - both Irish and not - straight through to the 21st century. What's clear, through the controversy, is that Irish Americans chose to identify with the narrative the sign represents. So the controversy over "No Irish Need Apply" signs ask the same questions that have been raised for every single group of immigrants since then: are they really being discriminated against in material ways, like work and housing, or are they just the victims of prejudiced attitudes? And if they react by thinking of themselves as underdogs, are they acknowledging the truth, or making themselves into victims? But over time, the immigrant group has fought back against discrimination and won, and has assimilated into broader American society - to the point that it becomes hard to imagine they ever would have been oppressed to begin with.Īs it was with the Irish in the 19th century, the story implies, so it will be with Latino and Asian immigrants today. When politicians or others refer to "No Irish Need Apply" signs, here's what they're saying: every new immigrant group that's come to the United States has faced discrimination from natives. There's a reason (beyond academic infighting) that the question of whether the symbolic "No Irish Need Apply" sign was exaggerated - and with it, the scope of anti-Irish discrimination during the first big wave of Irish Catholic immigration to the US - is still being fought over almost 200 years later. In the other, arguing that they were a lot more widespread, is a 14-year-old with excellent archival research skills. In one corner, arguing that an Irish immigrant in mid-19th-century America was relatively unlikely to run into "No Irish Need Apply" postings, is a tenured but ideologically iconoclastic historian.
It's also the subject of a surprisingly heated academic fight.
This image has become a stand-in for an entire narrative about how immigrants are treated in America. Fried's findings and the current controversy. The article has been updated to reflect Ms. UPDATE: After this article was first published, in March 2015, Rebecca Fried published her essay debunking academic claims that "No Irish Need Apply" signs were vanishingly rare.
0 kommentar(er)
