Being a Mick
03.17.09: St. Paddy's Day
I am a mick. If you didn’t know, “mick” is a racial slur referring to a person of Irish descent. Following the example of African-Americans, who adopted a word intended to degrade and dehumanize them and transformed it into a badge of pride and a term of endearment, I too am adopting a pejorative word and re-forging it into a symbol of brotherhood.
I am a mick. And damn proud of it.
Don't get me wrong: in Ireland, they consider me an American, which I am. But they still like me a bit more than your average American, mainly because my name is Seamus. This is probably the only instance in which my name has ever worked in my favor. But I digress.
In America, the thought of racism against Irish people may sound absurd in this day and age. After all, St. Patrick’s Day is arguably the biggest party holiday of the year, rivaled only by Halloween, which is itself another holiday imported from Ireland. The Irish have been fully assimilated into American culture: at least 12% of the nation are of Irish descent, and at least 50% of the nation claim to be of Irish descent. We even have a holiday that encourages people to pretend to be Irish in order to get laid. With this in mind, it seems incredibly popular to be a mick in the United States today.
However, it hasn’t always been popular to be Irish. Indeed, historically the Irish are one of the most maligned and slandered races the world has ever seen.
Keep in mind that we didn’t have an Irish (or a Catholic, for that matter) President of the United States until 1961. In that sense, John F. Kennedy was the Barack Obama of the 60s: the first president from a marginalized ethnic and cultural group, a race that had been maligned by the Anglo-Saxon Protestants who had been running the country up until that point. To this day, Kennedy remains the only Catholic president the U.S. has ever had (though Reagan’s father was Catholic, his mother raised him as a Protestant). Anti-Catholic sentiments were fairly common in the first two centuries of American history, and the KKK reviled Catholics and Jews almost as much as they did African Americans.
Anti-Irish racism, in America and Europe, is rooted in the English conquest of Ireland. English propaganda circulating in the twelfth century painted the Irish as heathen savages. When an Englishman attained the office of the papacy and became Pope Adrian IV, a racist man was given a great deal of political power. Adrian IV issued a papal decree authorizing the English King Henry II to conquer Ireland in order to “reform Church practices.” Imperialists always have a flimsy excuse.
Over time, the kings of Ireland were dethroned, and their lands were subjugated one by one under the cruel heel of the Norman-English conquest. Even the High King of Ireland, Rory O'Connor, was ultimately deposed, becoming the last of the illustrious High Kings. More than seven centuries of English tyranny, oppression, and exploitation ensued, as England raped Ireland’s people, lands, and natural resources. To this very day, England still occupies the northern portion of the land of my forebears.
For seven hundred years the English tried to suppress Irish art, literature, and music. But when the harp was outlawed, the harpers played on, proudly, as outlaws. And when the Irish language was suppressed, it was Irish bards who went on to make many of the most enduring contributions to English literature. For what student of literature has not bowed before the titans Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney? As a professor of mine, Barry Sanders, once said: "It's funny that they still call it English Lit, when most of the best writers are Irish and American." Indeed, considering the small size of the Emerald Isle, the Irish have made a disproportionately large contribution to world literature.
Growing up, I was always mildly bothered by the fact that many of my favorite recording artists were English, and practically none of them were Irish. I mean, I love U2, Thin Lizzy, and the Pogues, and Sinéad O'Connor’s cool, but they are vastly outnumbered by the plethora of English rock legends. I figured that English corporations were pushing English bands, in the same way that the British Empire has been shoving its culture down the world’s throat for centuries, just like America does today.
But then I did some research. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison: they were all Irish. They grew up in Liverpool, but it was Irish blood that coursed through their veins.
That’s right: three quarters of the Beatles, England’s darlings, were of Irish descent, from Irish families. (And, no offense to Ringo, the most important three quarters of the Beatles.)
David Bowie? Half Irish. Between Bowie and the Beatles, I was sated. (It should also be noted that David Gahan, lead singer of Depeche Mode, and Morrissey, lead singer of the Smiths, are of Irish descent as well.) What a relief it was to find out that many of my heroes, the British Gods of Rock and Roll were, in actuality, Irish, just like me. Despite the muzzles and shackles of the British Empire, the Irish voice has been heard!
With regards to American music, Elvis, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett of Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, and Alicia Keys are all at least part Irish. And I’m just scratching the surface.
But back to my story: anti-Irish racism.
When the adulterous, wife-murdering tyrant of England, Henry VIII, split from the Catholic Church in 1533 because the Pope wouldn’t sanction his divorce, the English were given a fresh reason to persecute the long-suffering Irish: religious intolerance. As the Church of England became the dominant theopolitical force in the realm, the Irish were now hated not only for being Irish, but also for being Catholic.
More oppression and abuse ensued, culminating in, but not ending with, the genocidal Irish-slaughtering rampages of English Lord Protector (and racist, butchering maniac) Oliver Cromwell in the mid 17th century. The Irish were massacred once again, and in perhaps the greatest numbers yet, victims of the bigoted and underhanded English aristocracy and the legions commanded by the English crown.
When the Irish immigrated to the U.S. in the 19th century in search of a better life and a just government, they were greeted with the same hostile xenophobia that Mexican immigrants are met with today, except that Americans were far more overt with their racism back then. “No Irish Need Apply” signs, commonly called “NINA signs,” were posted on businesses across the country. Indeed, there were entire political parties dedicated to hatred against Irish Catholics. The Irish, much to their chagrin, found that they had escaped English racism only to contend with American bigotry.
During the Industrial Revolution, the Irish shared the same social position as Chinese immigrants and African slaves, and competed with both groups for the same thankless and oppressive labor jobs as railroad barons became millionaires off the sweat and blood of the enslaved working class. Ah, the joys of unregulated capitalism.
But like I said before, things are different in America today. The stereotype of the drunken Irishman is the last vestige of anti-Irish racism prevalent in our culture, and that stereotype is now proudly encouraged by young, hard-partying Irish-American men, myself included. We would be wise, though, to remember that label for what it is: a racist stereotype perpetuated by the British and Americans in the 19th century as a means of dehumanizing our people.
In the United Kingdom, however, anti-Irish racism still lingers, though not as openly as before. This is even subtly reflected in popular culture: in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the good house, Gryffindor, is red, a color traditionally symbolizing England, and the evil house, Slytherin, is green, a color traditionally symbolizing Ireland and Irish Catholics. However, Rowling goes on to root for the Irish quidditch team and champion the working class against the abuses of the racist aristocracy, so her anti-Irish carbon footprint is zero.
As prevalent as anti-Irish racism has been throughout the centuries, it’s quite odd that no word exists to describe the phenomenon. With this in mind, I have taken the liberty of coining one:
anti-Celtism
noun
hostility to or prejudice against the Irish.
DERIVATIVES
anti-Celt noun
anti-Celtic adjective
SYNONYMS
anti-Erinism
anti-Gaelism
This term can also be applied to racism against the Scots, who have been subject to much of the same bigotry endured by the Irish and share many of the same bloodlines.
On that note, Happy St. Patrick’s Day. You can find me in Hermosa Beach with a pint of Guinness and a flask of Jameson.
- your favorite mick
