Early unions operated as schools teaching Irish whiteness
Evidence
If the unions of the 1830s, headed largely by native-born and British Protestants, functioned at that time as schools for teaching the Irish the meaning of whiteness, the unions later were to become to a considerable extent Irish institutions. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 412
Categorization
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
- XREF: connects to: Irish ascension to whiteness resulted from strategic choice, not inevitability — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 35; The Democratic Party taught Irish immigrants the meaning of whiteness. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 286; Even Irish radical movements reinforced the white solidarity under Jacksonianism. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 289 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- The Irish were the prototype white servants later absorbed into a white racial identity
#expands(0.85) - Irish whiteness required excluding blacks from any shared occupation and erasing memory
#expands(0.85) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 400 - White racial solidarity was an ideology masking the origins of the white working class
#expands(0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 426 - English racialism predated and shaped the proletarianization of the Irish
#expands(0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 18 - Irish immigrants achieved whiteness through working the auto assembly lines
#qualifies(0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 182 - Irish absorption into whiteness helped sustain slavery rather than vice versa.
#contradicts(0.75) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 261