Comment by skissane
4 years ago
That source never actually mentions Irish people, even while it suggests people from a number of other European nations are not "purely white"–which is not the same as "non-white".
Did Franklin mean to include Irish people in that even if he didn't explicitly mention them? That seems unlikely, because when he wrote that in the 1750s, there was very little anti-Irish sentiment in America, and I'm aware of no evidence that Franklin personally harboured any. Most 18th century Irish Americans were Protestant, and whether or not they technically count as "WASP", they were rarely distinguished from them.
Benjamin Franklin visited Ireland in 1771; I'm aware of no evidence he thought he was visiting a "non-white" country. During his visit, he socialised with the wealthy Protestant establishment, although he saw the poverty of the Irish masses and was struck by it – however, rather than blame it on their race, he attributed their plight to British rule, even later suggesting that without independence, the British would reduce poor Americans to the same extreme poverty that poor Irish endured. Keep in mind that in 18th century Ireland, the Protestant establishment in Dublin viewed themselves as "Irish"; they did not see themselves as a different nationality from Irish Catholics, and would not have agreed that they were a different "race" from them.
Here's the issue: you've come to a conclusion, and then you're using that conclusion as an assumption to dismiss evidence against it.
For example: you say that it seems unlikely that Franklin considered Irish people inferior, because in 1755, Americans didn't have anti-Irish sentiment.
But the fact we're trying to determine is "was there anti-Irish sentiment in colonial era America", using Franklin's words as evidence. If you simply assume your conclusion and use it to invalidate evidence, then there isn't really a point to me providing evidence.
Something else worth noting is that Ben excludes Swedes from whiteness, despite their Protestantism.
Anyways, this isn't really a hill I care to die on, so I'll be bowing out of this discussion.
> But the fact we're trying to determine is "was there anti-Irish sentiment in colonial era America", using Franklin's words as evidence.
Franklin's words are irrelevant to the question of "was there anti-Irish sentiment in colonial era America" – because he never mentions the Irish at all.
He does express a belief in an intra-white racial hierarchy, of "more pure" and "less pure" white people. He never once tells us where he thinks the Irish sit in it. My assumption about where he would have put them is as good as yours.