Anyone else pick up on the Slavery comment while they were all in the convertible talking about the Irish? seemed a little outta place in a disney movie
"Cellar Door"
i dont remember hearing it.. But i know that Irish people were slaves in some of the Caribbean islands. They were indentured servants in their homeland for centuries as well.
shareHoly crap, I thought I was the only one who noticed this. I mean i watched this movie when I was a wee bit old so I didn't really understand the little comment that was made. But I just rewatched this at 3am (i'm a lot older now) and its a little awkward... Though I did laugh for a few minutes, funny how i didn't notice this before.
shareWell the movie was about heritage. All the kids were supposed to be learning about their families. It didn't seem that out of place to me, well it shouldn't be out of place. But I guess Disney (especially DC) isn't always quick to acknowledge that sort of thing. Then again, they did make The Color of Friendship. So they acknowledge it when it's relevant.
shareHaha "At least they got paid!"
That was great...
Holy carp!!! I never noticed that. Thats freakin hilarious and extremely subtle. Wow. Ive watched this movie maybe a half dozen times since it came out, including an hour ago, and I never caught that. In fact, I was trying to figure out the joke with that this time. "Why did Russell say that?" Wow I feel dumb haha
shareI believe the girl said the Irish were treated "like" slaves, or something. She didn't say they actually were. Which is true, they were treated horrendously upon coming to this country, and given some of the lowest wages. They were treated like trash, and the prejudice against them was unbelievable.
shareBy what I read in the Ancient Order of Hibernians (I think I read it in their newspaper, The Hibernian Digest) is that the Irish was the first non-Native American slaves brought over by the English. So, the Irish was not always paid when the English brought the Irish over. And the Irish slaves were cheaper than the slaves brought over from Africa, the Irish was made to do the more dangerous jobs and the africans were offer the safer jobs.
And when they could no longer use Irish slaves after too many white people came over (more white people means the Irish could hide from their slave owners in another town), they still only could get unsafe jobs like digging canals. That is because the slave owners would not want to risk their property being killed with the unsafe jobs.
So in some ways, the black slaves were treated better than the Irish.
That's debatable. Africans were chosen as slaves because: they could withstand the conditions, they were good farmers, the Europeans had easy excuses to justify their enslavement (they looked differently, they were pagan...). Most importantly, they were good farmers. Is it possible that the Irish got jobs the Africans didn't know how to do? Like digging canals and working with dangerous materials that they'd never seen before?
shareThe Irish were much better farmers than Africans. The Irish WERE enslaved for hundreds of years in America and Europe, they were beaten and killed. an African slave costs more than a NEW Car in today's money, but an Irish slave could be had for peanuts. They called them "Indentured Servants", but most never became free, the were sold off when their "sentence" was almost up or called up on BS charges and their terms extended. The Africans were treated much better on average due to the difference in value...
shareyeah, but i don't think it was out of place it was just an explanation on how hard it was for them!
shareMy not-so-distant ancestors were bound slaves aka bond servants. That's how many Irish paid for their passage here: by becoming slaves. They had so little value to people that, if they became seriously ill on the voyage over, which was likely to happen because of starvation and living conditions, they were thrown into the ocean. Those ships were dubbed "coffin ships", and the saying is that, if tombstones could be placed on the surface of the sea, the line would stretch farther than from the shores of America to that of Ireland.
People often were divided from relatives (as happened in our family, in which, for example, a brother and sister were parted in their early teens and didn't meet again till they were elderly), even children from their parents, with delivery to different parts of the country though they told them they would be close to each other. Some might arrive at Ellis Island, but many were left near New Orleans or other ports. Many of these people had never been more than walking distance from their homes, and many did not speak English. When they were checked through, officials often gave them different, sometimes simpler/Americanized surnames.
The Irish tried to prove themselves by taking any work for whatever pay, so others resented this "underbidding". They simply were trying to fit into this society that most had been forced into. They actually had their land taken from them and were ordered out of the country~not all, but a great many of them. Some did choose to come here.
Before that, the people often were captured and sold as slaves in various countries.
Sorry if any of this was too serious in comparison to the movie. All of us were raised to be aware of our origins and what it took for our "great-grands" to get here. Some had kind people to work for, but others were not as fortunate.
*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***
another category of irish immigrants: prisoners, who were put to work in penal colonies such as in Georgia, rather than being transported to Australia. These prisoners were generally convicted of a hanging offense (sometimes no more than stealing a loaf of bread), but their sentence was "reduced" to transportation.
Some people now say that the american NINA (no irish need apply) prejudice was a myth. However, hundreds of years of documentation of the plight of the Irish in Europe can leave no doubt about the treatment of, or attitudes toward the Irish before coming here. I guess it could be compared to our treatment of former slaves up until the Civil Rights movement. Although the Irish were free to own their own bodies, they were often stereotyped as lazy, stupid, worthless, or thieves: little more than vermin. In some ways, the Irish were the n*****s of the British Isles. :-(