What is an Irishman's idea of a seven course banquet? A six-pack and a potato.
What is an Irishman's idea of foreplay? "Brace yourself, Bridget!"
How come the Irish recipe for chili calls for only 239 beans? "Well, one wee bean more and it becomes toooo-farty!"
How come Irish-Catholics don't bother with divorce? Who wants custody of 12 kids?
How many Irishmen does it take to change a lightbulb? One, he's drunk and tells it to screw itself.
How many blacks does it take to change a lightbulb?
Ooops, can't do that joke....
How come?
Let me compare and contrast:
Slavery was endemic world-wide in the 1600s, when the British were kidnapping Irish-folk and forcing them into labor, sometimes legalized as indentured (the Irish bit the agreement to leave a tooth impression as identification), so essentially the first slave labor in USA was the Irish.
Ireland had been the object of great British abuse for nearly a thousand years. Absolutely everything horrible than can be done by one people to another was done in those years. Even up to say 1920, even the most horrible policies and calumnies were laid on the Irish.
That the Irish could be eliminated by starvation was practiced. That the Irish were to be kept alive only enough to provide a source of soldiers from which to harvest in the event of war. (And the English are adept at defending positions to the last Irishman.) That any manner of experimentation might be visited on the Irish was fine. Nothing derogatory ever said in the most virulent racist USA online comments about African-Americans have the Irish ever been spared. They are genetically inferior, lower intelligence, culturally backward, their problems are self-inflicted, blah, yada, bullshit. Those jokes above are vestigial: the Irish eat funny food, are sexually incontinent, lazy substance abusers. Sound familiar? Comparisons go on, as both are big in entertainment, petty crime, etc.
So what happened? How did the Irish get mainstreamed while Afro-Americans remain "America's Irish?" And at the same time, how do waves of Asians, Mexicans, Polish, Iranians come into USA and thrive while African-Americans continue to flounder?
Well, first off, every country in the world has its despised class. The Japanese the Ainu, Israel the Palestinians (if not, the Yemeni Jews), the Germans the Turks, this is universal and it comes with begging a hegemon to rule. So USA is not unique in this regard, and sadly for African-Americans, in USA, they are it.
But the Irish were it, for a long time. How did they get out of it? And how did all those others that came here escape it? It's very simple, in 1921 the Irish got their own country. All those waves of Vietnamese, Chinese, Poles, etc all had their own country. American of African origin have no country to which to return. (In some ways, the other despised class in USA, American Indians, have no place to go, but that is an ironic twist).
Try as from Monroe to Lincoln might to rid USA of Americans of African ancestry, the fact is these Africans became Americans due to their experience, and America literally gained African DNA by their presence. No ex-slaves, and USA goes full David Duke, New Christy Minstrels, boiled chicken, and the minuet. When scientific racism grew the effort continued to eliminate Americans of African Ancestry, with such in USA as Lincoln making slavery constitutional in 1865 (the only modern nation that still expressly provides for slavery still on the books) and to secretly destroy them with "medical experiments." The African slave experience in USA might just be as bad as the Irish experience under the English.
So what is to be done? Well, in all crises, we can look to Hong Kong. They have an independent city state under a one-country, two systems. We have one country, two systems in Louisiana, a state that does not subscribe to the USA UCC-rules-of-the-economic-road to which the other 49 subscribe. We have Indian reservations, dreadful as they are, but now awakening to their potential in the "sovereignty movement."
This of course brings up many issues, which I will address tomorrow.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
What is an Irishman's idea of foreplay? "Brace yourself, Bridget!"
How come the Irish recipe for chili calls for only 239 beans? "Well, one wee bean more and it becomes toooo-farty!"
How come Irish-Catholics don't bother with divorce? Who wants custody of 12 kids?
How many Irishmen does it take to change a lightbulb? One, he's drunk and tells it to screw itself.
How many blacks does it take to change a lightbulb?
Ooops, can't do that joke....
How come?
Let me compare and contrast:
Slavery was endemic world-wide in the 1600s, when the British were kidnapping Irish-folk and forcing them into labor, sometimes legalized as indentured (the Irish bit the agreement to leave a tooth impression as identification), so essentially the first slave labor in USA was the Irish.
Ireland had been the object of great British abuse for nearly a thousand years. Absolutely everything horrible than can be done by one people to another was done in those years. Even up to say 1920, even the most horrible policies and calumnies were laid on the Irish.
That the Irish could be eliminated by starvation was practiced. That the Irish were to be kept alive only enough to provide a source of soldiers from which to harvest in the event of war. (And the English are adept at defending positions to the last Irishman.) That any manner of experimentation might be visited on the Irish was fine. Nothing derogatory ever said in the most virulent racist USA online comments about African-Americans have the Irish ever been spared. They are genetically inferior, lower intelligence, culturally backward, their problems are self-inflicted, blah, yada, bullshit. Those jokes above are vestigial: the Irish eat funny food, are sexually incontinent, lazy substance abusers. Sound familiar? Comparisons go on, as both are big in entertainment, petty crime, etc.
So what happened? How did the Irish get mainstreamed while Afro-Americans remain "America's Irish?" And at the same time, how do waves of Asians, Mexicans, Polish, Iranians come into USA and thrive while African-Americans continue to flounder?
Well, first off, every country in the world has its despised class. The Japanese the Ainu, Israel the Palestinians (if not, the Yemeni Jews), the Germans the Turks, this is universal and it comes with begging a hegemon to rule. So USA is not unique in this regard, and sadly for African-Americans, in USA, they are it.
But the Irish were it, for a long time. How did they get out of it? And how did all those others that came here escape it? It's very simple, in 1921 the Irish got their own country. All those waves of Vietnamese, Chinese, Poles, etc all had their own country. American of African origin have no country to which to return. (In some ways, the other despised class in USA, American Indians, have no place to go, but that is an ironic twist).
Try as from Monroe to Lincoln might to rid USA of Americans of African ancestry, the fact is these Africans became Americans due to their experience, and America literally gained African DNA by their presence. No ex-slaves, and USA goes full David Duke, New Christy Minstrels, boiled chicken, and the minuet. When scientific racism grew the effort continued to eliminate Americans of African Ancestry, with such in USA as Lincoln making slavery constitutional in 1865 (the only modern nation that still expressly provides for slavery still on the books) and to secretly destroy them with "medical experiments." The African slave experience in USA might just be as bad as the Irish experience under the English.
So what is to be done? Well, in all crises, we can look to Hong Kong. They have an independent city state under a one-country, two systems. We have one country, two systems in Louisiana, a state that does not subscribe to the USA UCC-rules-of-the-economic-road to which the other 49 subscribe. We have Indian reservations, dreadful as they are, but now awakening to their potential in the "sovereignty movement."
This of course brings up many issues, which I will address tomorrow.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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