Comment by aliqot
4 years ago
When people used to say that Irish weren't white, it has nothing to do with what you just said, it had to do with them being the outsider subjugated class, they're akin to the other minorities at the time who were in the same situation. This is how they became known as non-white. Jews got the same rap during this time.
When did people "used to say that Irish weren't white"? Only really starting in the 1990s (with Noel Ignatiev's book) – by which time anti-Irish sentiment in the US was rather long gone. Nobody called Irish people "non-white" during the heyday of discrimination against them.
It was common post-immigration all the way until the civil rights movement.
I don't agree that it was in any way "common". Can you cite a 19th century (or even pre-1990s) source calling Irish people "non-white"?
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