English racialism predated and shaped the proletarianization of the Irish

Evidence

So Robinson not only begins in Europe; he also chips away at many of the claims and assertions central to European historiography, particularly of the Marxist and liberal varieties. For instance, Robinson’s discussion of the Irish working class enables him to expose the myth of a “universal” proletariat: just as the Irish were products of popular traditions borne and bred under colonialism, the “English” working class of the colonizing British Isles was formed by Anglo-Saxon chauvinism, a racial ideology shared across class lines that allowed the English bourgeoisie to rationalize low wages and mistreatment for the Irish. This particular form of English racialism was not invented by the ruling class to divide and conquer (though it did succeed in that respect); rather, it was there at the outset, shaping the process of proletarianization and the formation of working-class consciousness. Finally, in this living feudal order, socialism was born as an alternative bourgeois strategy to combat social inequality. Directly challenging Marx himself, Robinson declares: “Socialist critiques of society were attempts to further the bourgeois revolutions against feudalism.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 18

Categorization

• XREF: The Irish-alongside-English case parallels the Somme analysis of the Black radical tradition — internal European colonialism as template for later racial hierarchy. Relates to Noel Ignatiev’s ‘How the Irish Became White.’ — connects to: Racial categorization first targeted Ireland through internal colonialism — , Stephanie B. Martens - Civilization and…, 26; Britain shifted Ireland from racial toward national oppression after 1801. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 136; Early unions operated as schools teaching Irish whiteness — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 412 (+3 more)