Irish immigrants initially lived intimately alongside Black Americans in shared districts

Evidence

On their arrival in America, the Irish were thrown together with black people on jobs and in neighborhoods, with predictable results. The Census of 1850 was the first to include a class it called “mulattoes”; it enumerated 406,000 nationwide, including 15,000 in Pennsylvania, the largest number for any free state. There is no closer breakdown, but they made up a little over a quarter of the state’s “colored” population. Applying that ratio to the 3,000 Negroes living in the heavily Irish Moyamensing district (whose total population was 24,000) gives a figure of over eight hundred persons of mixed ancestry, or one out of every thirty. Even if most of these were the children of slaveholders who had been manumitted and migrated north, an Irish resident of that district must have seen on the street constant reminders of the fact and possibility of sexual union between European-Americans and Negroes. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 146

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s comparative category-reclassification project: the Irish began in close contact with Blacks, contrary to any primordial distance. — connects to: Antebellum Irish and blacks shared social, criminal, and religious life — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 149; Irish and Black families originally shared proximate poverty and mutual care — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 459; Irish immigrants learned anti-Black hatred upon landing in America, not at home — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 6 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Irish and Black families originally shared proximate poverty and mutual care #corroborates (0.97) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 459
• Irish immigrants learned anti-Black hatred upon landing in America, not at home #complicates (0.78) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 6
• The Irish moved from an oppressed Irish race to an oppressing American race #qualifies (0.76) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 31
• Irish immigrants were visually distinguishable by dress like free blacks #expands (0.75) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 56
• Arriving in America corrupted the Irish into racial prejudice #qualifies (0.74) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 7
• Lower East Side residents two-thirds nonwhite lived separately from white ethnics #qualifies (0.73) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1068