"TODAY'S AFRICAN-AMERICANS should use the same techniques that 19th century Irish immigrants used to overcome discrimination.
Today's African-Americans have some distinct advantages over 19th-century Irish immigrants who arrived in this country. Those particular Irish immigrants were usually uneducated and illiterate. Today's African-American population has a 79% graduation rate from high school, so they have considerably more education compared to the 19th-century Irish."
There's just one problem with theory, you can't compare the american society in the 21st century with how it was in the 19th century. Back in the 19th, inflation was much lower, the country was much less crowded, and there was a high demand for manual labor.
Today, there are a lot of college graduates of all races who come out of school with out any job prospects. It is much tougher to find a job today, even with an education, then it was in the 19th century.
Another big difference in our society today is how we handle the war on drugs.
During prohibition, bootleggers were basically the drug dealers of their time. Back then, most of the bootleggers and big time gangsters were the children of poor irish, italian, and jewish immigrants. But the government didn't come after them the way they go after drug dealers today. Gangsters like dutch schultz, benny sigel, and meyer lansky made millions of dollars, and reinvested in their community.
Blacks could never do this because starting with the emergance of big time black heroin dealers in the 70's, the federal gov. started going after them with all their might, and it's even worse today. During prohibition, public officials were corrupt, police and judges were corrupt, and the poor immigrants were able to help their own people.
"Furthermore, job discrimination against the Irish in the 19th-century was completely legal. Any employer could simply put up a sign saying, "No Irish Need Apply". Today's African-Americans, on the other hand, are protected against job discrimination by Affirmative Action."
The famous NINA signs were a myth in america, there's no record of them at any major employer.
Here's some information you should look at:
The fact that Irish vividly "remember" NINA signs is a curious historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, 2 archivist, or museum curator has ever located one 3 ; no photograph or drawing exists. 4 No other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs. Only Irish Catholics have reported seeing the sign in America—no Protestant, no Jew, no non-Irish Catholic has reported seeing one. This is especially strange since signs were primarily directed toward these others:
The business literature, both published and unpublished, never mentions NINA or any policy remotely like it. The newspapers and magazines are silent. The courts are silent. There is no record of an angry youth tossing a brick through the window that held such a sign. Have we not discovered all of the signs of an urban legend?
The NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after the 1798 Irish rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it was used by English to indicate their distrust of the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant.
Was there any systematic job discrimination against the Catholic Irish in the US: possibly, but direct evidence is very hard to come by. On the other hand Protestant businessmen vigorously raised money for mills, factories and construction projects they knew would mostly employ Irishmen, 14 while the great majority of middle class Protestant households in the major cities employed Irish maids.
As you can see, the irish did not face massive job discrimination like blacks did during jim crow.
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PatriotsRchamps
17 years ago
"There's just one problem with theory, you can't compare the american society in the 21st century with how it was in the 19th century. Back in the 19th, inflation was much lower, the country was much less crowded, and there was a high demand for manual labor."
On the contrary, the country was never more crowded in its cities than during the mid-19th century. The population was growing at an alarming rate because of the millions of immigrants that were entering the country and residing in the cities. Although it's true that many jobs were menial labor jobs, there was fierce competition for those jobs because of the huge number of immigrants seeking work.
You're speculating that they were more jobs available in the 19th-century. Do you have any facts to back that up? Do you have any unemployment rates to prove your point?
The difference between the 19th-century Irish and today's African-American community is that the Irish were willing to take the worst lowest paying jobs available. Many of today's African-Americans are NOT WILLING TO DO THIS. Instead, the worst lowest paying jobs today are taken by high school students or illegal immigrants who are willing to take those jobs.
Many of today's African-Americans have a higher standard for what they want as a job than did the Irish of the 19th-century.
I FOUND THE ARTICLE THAT YOU QUOTED ACCUSING THAT "No Irish Need Apply" SIGNS NEVER EXISTED. THAT PROFESSOR MAKES A BLANKET STATEMENT WITHOUT DOING ANY RESEARCH. HE DID NOT INTERVIEW IRISH IMMIGRANTS OR THEIR DESCENDENTS. He also fails to mention that one reason why there are not thousands of "No Irish Need Apply" signs lying around everywhere is because WHO WOULD SAVE A HELP WANTED SIGN.
MAKE NO MISTAKE, THOUGH, "NO IRISH NEED APPLY" SIGNS AND NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENTS DID EXIST !!
Here is a web site where you can purchase a replica of an ORIGINAL "No Irish Need Apply" sign.
http://www.hatikvah-center.org/Artifacts/plate.html
and here is the web site where you can see an advertisement from the NEW YORK TIMES saying no Irish need apply.
http://www.bookguy.com/Irish/Books/irishem.htm
I CHALLENGE YOU TO FIND ONE SIGN OR ADVERTISEMENT BEING USED TODAY THAT SAYS "BLACKS NEED NOT APPLY". You won't find ANY because the laws now prohibit such job discrimination. The bottom line is that today's blacks in the United States are protected whereas the Irish of the 19th-century and early 20th century were NOT.
It's irresponsible of you to dismiss hundreds of historians who have done ACTUAL RESEARCH to confirm that "No Irish Need Apply" signs existed. The next thing you're going to do is find an article saying that the Holocaust never occurred (because I'm sure that you could find at least one article saying that). Just because you find one author who makes an assertion does NOT mean it's true. As my history professors used to say, 'You must prove your case with multiple sources.'
My grandparents lived and worked near Boston and they told me that they saw signs saying "No Irish Need Apply". Senator Ted Kennedy says that his father told him that he saw such signs in Boston too. I find it offensive that you would insinuate that these people are lying.
As to your assertion that prohibition made a big difference, you fail to mention that prohibition only lasted 13 years. Are you implying that in those 13 years the small number of Irish bootleggers somehow lifted the Irish out of discrimination? Give me a break. You're ignoring the previous 75 years where the Irish EARNED A REPUTATION for hard work. Also, the Irish had established themselves as a political force LONG BEFORE PROHIBITION.
You mentioned that the Irish elected other Irish into political office. That's true. Why don't you mentioned how today's African-Americans have an abysmal voting turnout during elections? Instead you choose to talk about the past (as usual) instead of the present. Regardless of past voting discrimination against blacks, the fact still remains that the MAJORITY of US blacks CHOOSE NOT TO VOTE. 79% of blacks graduate from high school, so most blacks have been educated regarding their current right to vote and the voting process.
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