Irish and Black families originally shared proximate poverty and mutual care
Evidence
Let us imagine two families, one Irish and one black, living next door to each other in one of the maze of alleys off Seventh Street. In good weather the women wash clothes together at the well they share in the courtyard, and exchange news, complaints, and household advice. In emergencies, they care for each other’s children. Both families are desperately poor; the Irish husband works on the docks, when he can get work; the other goes up and down the streets with a sandstone wheel, crying “Knives and scissors to grind.” … A riot breaks out and a mob sweeps through the miserable street like some natural force. The word reaches the Irish woman: if she puts a burning candle in her window, her house will be spared. She does, and it is. The next morning she comes out to discover her next door neighbor weeping at the pile of rubble in front of her door that was once her bed, table, and dishes. … What can the Irishwoman say to her neighbor? That she is sorry? When the black woman looks at her reproachfully because her home was spared, will she feel guilty? And if so, how long will it take for her guilt to be replaced by resentment and rationalization? — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 459
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Irish mob violence against Blacks arose from labor competition, not prior hatred — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 488; Irish and free blacks were speculatively expected to amalgamate; Racism against Europeans like the Irish predated color-based slavery (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Racism against Europeans like the Irish predated color-based slavery
#complicates(0.75) - Irish migrants faced discrimination similar to later ethnic minorities
#expands(0.75) - Freed blacks built mutual aid associations on the same pattern as white societies
#exemplifies(0.72) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1405 - Shared suffering forged a common task and vision across the African diaspora
#corroborates(0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 829 - Shared parenting burdens spark cross-cultural conviviality in diverse communities.
#corroborates(0.70) — Farhan Samanani, Conviviality and its others, 40