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  #61  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 9:19 PM
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Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
Woodlawn, Bronx is an enclave for Irish expats/immigrants. Not Irish-Americans. I have Irish friends there who are carpenters... they make tons of money working construction in the city. My cousin's husband and his Irish buddies largely built the lobby of 1WTC.

edit: just saw Crawford's post
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
There's still an Irish (not Irish-American) concentration on the Bronx/Yonkers border. Katonah Avenue in Woodlawn (Bronx) and McLean Ave. in adjacent SE Yonkers are the main commercial streets. There are still immigration centers, Irish papers for sale, etc. Lots of construction workers with no papers are Irish, even today. Construction pays extremely well here.

Thirty years ago, however, there was an Irish (not Irish-American) concentration that extended southward, all the way to Fordham Rd. in the Bronx. Norwood was heavily Irish until maybe 15 years ago. Still a few remnants. Bainbridge Ave. in Norwood was very Irish until recently. Still a couple of old man bars.

There's also a decent-sized community in Woodside, Queens.

Of course, assimilated Irish-American communities are everywhere in the NE corridor between Philly and Boston.
Do the Irish and Irish-Americans often socialize together or live apart? Sometimes newer waves of immigrants choose to go where the older waves used to, even if they're now assimilated, but sometimes they don't, as they don't feel any connection.
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  #62  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 9:24 PM
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Originally Posted by Ant131531 View Post
Eh I think plenty of Chinese and Korean immigrants hold onto their group identity.
I think for the Chinese, it's not so much the older groups hanging on to theirs, but the newer immigrants replenishing their own version of Chinese (now mostly from the mainland) identity.

For instance, back in the day Chinese immigrants came from the Cantonese regions and had more of a Cantonese (and the older Taishanese) culture, for instance traditional, not simplified Chinese script etc.

But now, the newer mainland wave of Chinese immigrants are defining the culture and using the rise of China itself to boost what it means to be "Chinese" in the US, and elsewhere in the diaspora (Mandarin, not Cantonese or simplified script etc.).
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  #63  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 9:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
I think part of the phenomenon we see with the Irish in the US and Canada is that historically oppressed or conquered people seem to maintain their group identity longer and more intensely than those who weren't. You see this with African Americans and Native Americans, you see it with Jewish and Irish white people and you see it with the Hmong compared to other recent Asian immigrants.
Well, Jewish (of the early 20th century Ashkenazi immigrant waves) and similar Irish immigrant waves are some of the examples often cited as assimilation success stories. Where some aspects of their cultures were partially lost as they assimilated into Anglo culture but also their cultures heavily became part of US culture too. They experienced mostly forced assimilation in the old countries they escaped from, so they defined themselves in opposition to the old culture there, but less so on US soil

African American and Native Americans were historically oppressed on US soil itself, so the definition oneself in opposition to assimilation was stronger in terms of survival in the US itself.
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  #64  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 9:50 PM
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Irish identity is wayyyy thinner than Jewish though.
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  #65  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 9:51 PM
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Last edited by Docere; Mar 18, 2020 at 10:04 PM.
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  #66  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 10:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Capsicum View Post
Do the Irish and Irish-Americans often socialize together or live apart? Sometimes newer waves of immigrants choose to go where the older waves used to, even if they're now assimilated, but sometimes they don't, as they don't feel any connection.
That corner of the NW Bronx/Yonkers was Irish before the more recent waves. It was actually a much larger community in, say, 1980. Irish, not Irish American.

Really all of the West Bronx north of Fordham Rd. was heavily Irish until very recently. Riverdale was mostly Irish, now mostly Orthodox Jewish. Excepting the Irish Woodlawn area, and some Bangladeshis and Albanians, almost everywhere else north of Fordham Rd. is majority Hispanic these days.

But I think the present community is fairly stable. In 30 years, I think it will still be an enclave. It's fairly nice, has good schools and is kinda an island off by itself, surrounded by cemeteries and parks.
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  #67  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 10:17 PM
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A lot of European immigrants have gravitated toward an established ethnic community - and ended up replacing the more "Americanized" elements moving out. Outer borough Italian neighborhoods in NYC attracted postwar Italian immigrants. The old Polish American neighborhoods of NW Chicago are now filled with Poles who came in the 80s and 90s.
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  #68  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 10:17 PM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Irish identity is wayyyy thinner than Jewish though.
Yeah, the Jewish diaspora is in a league of its own (thus being the very namesake for the concept of diaspora in general). The African diaspora that's a product of the transatlantic slave trade and a global (heavily but not only New World) "black" identity and indigenous New World identities that came about through colonialism also have strong claims for a multi-generational strong persisting identity.

If the Irish identity were as strong, you'd see Irish-Canadians, Irish-Australians, and Irish in England etc. maintaining ties with Irish in Irish as strong and "international" as Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi Jews do with each other and with Jews in Israel, or at least Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and African Americans in global connectness to "black culture" (culturally, if maybe not literal visits).
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  #69  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2020, 10:26 PM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
A lot of European ethnic groups have gravitated toward an established ethnic community - and ended up replacing the more "Americanized" elements moving out. Outer borough Italian neighborhoods in NYC attracted Italian immigrants in the 50s and 60s. The old Polish American neighborhoods of NW Chicago are now filled with Poles 80s and 90s.
I find it interesting how some immigrants "replenish" or "replace" Americanized ones who move out. But some don't.

I mean, many European ethnic neighorhoods run out of new immigrants to maintain the culture and thus, many Little Italies in cities remain those by name and historical legacy only.

But even Chinatowns go away or lose their character because Chinese immigrants don't want to replenish them, and there's no shortage of recent Chinese immigrants to do so (just that they tend to go to suburbs or ethnoburbs now instead). In most US and Canadian cities, new Chinese immigrants far outnumber the descendants of the first people to establish Chinatowns but continuity is not necessarily there between those historically separated communities.

If even new Chinese immigrants don't want to go to historic Chinatowns (in many places they just establish their own new enclaves with no ties to the old ones, like in NYC, LA, Toronto), why would European immigrants today (in 2020, they surely are much wealthier comparatively than any turn-of-last century waves) feel a similar connection to a neighborhood of their own ethnically-related but now Americanized people from 100 years back? Surely, European immigrants and expats today (and anytime within the last generation) are not huddling together to form enclaves with their old-timers due to any insecurities or strong need for community support (as was needed back when most immigrants were struggling laborers with low English-speaking abilities, not wealthy expats).
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  #70  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2020, 2:29 PM
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Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
I get the impression whites from the Northeast hold on to ethnic identities more than in other parts of the country.

I'd imagine that's because the ethnic whites immigrating to the industrial northeastern & midwestern cities of the 19th and 20th century were entering an existing society that had already been established by the earlier English settlers. Whether Irish, Jewish, Italian, or something else - their identity was the "other" and existed in opposition to the Anglo Protestant majority culture.

That, and there's just more of them there.

In contrast, the immigrants that headed straight for the west were the original white settlers. Whether Catholic or Protestant, English or Irish or German or whatever, their divisions were superseded by those of European vs indigenous.

A big part of the allure and the mythology of "the west", I think, is about the freedom of escaping one's historical identity and freedom from the divisions of the old country that stubbornly held on in the east. While it's rapidly disappeared disappeared in the last several decades, historically speaking in North America, the sectarianism of the Protestant-Catholic divide seems to becomes stronge the further east you go (likely culminating at its most extreme in Newfoundland) - and that more than anything was the defining point of division amongst European ethnic groups.
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  #71  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2020, 8:43 PM
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The Irish of the Midwest and West had more social mobility and encountered less discrimination than their counterparts in New England with its Yankees vs. Irish polarization.
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  #72  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2020, 8:54 PM
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^ the irish in chicago certainly had no problem grabbing political power for themselves.

starting with ed kelly in 1933, up to daley II whose reign ended in 2011, chicago had 4 irish-american mayors (all from the bridgeport neighborhood, chicago's original irish powerbase bastion) who controlled the city for 66 of those 78 years.

though, with the city's first jewish mayor (rahm), and now first female african american mayor (lightfoot), (neither of whom were raised in the city) the days of (fading) irish bridgeport dictating to the rest of the city are likely gone forever. not that chicago will never again have anyone of irish descent as mayor, but it will never be like that irish bridgeport dynamic going forward.
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  #73  
Old Posted Mar 20, 2020, 3:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
St. Patrick's Day tomorrow. Does the "Irish" community exist outside of a few pockets in the diaspora nowadays?
Irish influence is still the dominant cultural influence here. My favourite examples are tourists from Ireland thinking we're mocking their accent, and all of the Irish press fawning over how similar it is. This is a nice example - an Irish photographer met a Newfoundland girl and couldn't place which part of Ireland her accent was from, was shocked to learn she was from here, ended up settling here, etc.

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I grew up in Dublin. I knew very little of Newfoundland. When I first met my Newfoundland-born wife while we were both working in the United States, I was intrigued by her accent. I could not identify what part of Ireland she was from! I was surprised to hear that she wasn’t from Ireland but was from Canada.

Yet she seemed so Irish, and my family — when they attended our wedding here in St. John’s more than 20 years ago — told friends back home, “Sure, Newfoundland is just like Ireland!”
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/long...ord-connection

What makes the Irish influence here so durable and strong is that almost all of us came from one small region of Ireland (Waterford/Wexford and the countryside in between). If you took a random small town in Portugal and moved it to an otherwise uninhabited island, a few centuries later it'd still be very Portuguese, even if dozens of families from all over Spain (in our case, England) had joined them over the years.

BUT... Irish is only a descriptor, or us giving credit to where we know our culture came from. We're still not Irish. We're Newfoundlanders - with strong English influences, and visible Scottish, Welsh, French, and Portuguese influences.

You'll often see Irish-Newfoundland or Newfoundland-Irish used as a adjective. But never JUST Irish.

For example, Irish Newfoundland Pub:



Or Irish Newfoundland (as a description of our traditional music) radio show:



We have all the same Irish folk songs (there were only two we could find that performers at the pubs in Dublin didn't know when we were there in September), but also our own in the same style:

Video Link


And the band me mudder named me after.

Video Link


So we're Newfoundlanders (in polls here, a vast majority of the population say they are Newfoundlanders even before being Canadian) but if you ask us what that means, then we'll say it's mostly Irish, with some other stuff mixed in.

When we were in Galway, one guy would not believe I wasn't from Waterford (which he knew particularly well). I would've had to produce my parents' birth certificates to change his mind lol I cherish the memory You know how some North Americans are desperate to be Irish? I don't have that. My juvenile affliction is a subconscious desperation to not be a generic Canadian - I just find it so reserved, boring, fake. So that's the motivation behind my cherishing moments like that one lol



BUT, playing my own devil's advocate... this Irish reporter clearly thought we were very Canadian. Her writing is fantastic - bolded the parts that made me laugh out loud:

The most Irish island in the world

The residents of Newfoundland don’t like being called ‘Newfies’ or Canadians, but you can call them Irish. And the town of Tilting, on its little-brother island of Fogo, is ‘Irish on the rocks’

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Newfoundland is not Canada, as the people there never tire of telling you. “Canada”, in this context, is not just a euphemism for “boring”, “law-abiding” or “flat”, the island only voted to join the confederation of provinces in 1948, and that vote was split 51 to 49 per cent – a cause of some abiding bitterness among the baymen, the former fishermen who live along these rocky shores.

Greg Malone, who wrote Don’t Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Canada’s Confederation with Newfoundland, says people have brought the book into cemeteries to read aloud over their parents’ graves, to tell them they were right all along.

...

So you can’t call them “Newfies”, and you can’t call them Canadians, but they will let you call them Irish – unless their ancestors came from Devon, but those ones are easy to spot because they talk like people from Devon. The Irish talk like they came from Dungarvan. Their accents were preserved by the salt Atlantic air, in tiny isolated communities along the shore. It was a long time before they got roads.

These days, the highway is long and the traffic serene: everyone drives like a lady or like a Canadian. “It looks like Canada to me,” I said to one dissenter and pointed out a hillside of pine trees that was only a Mountie short of a postcard. “That’s not pine,” he said (he seemed a bit shocked). “There’s no pine over there. Those trees are spruce and fir.”

It may all look the same to an outsider, but as you travel through the vast beauty of the landscape, you begin to lose yourself in the fractal variation of one bay or inlet that is crucially different to the inlet or bay before it, and the names you pass are more a story than a map: Random Island, Come by Chance, Witless Bay.

...

Winds rake the island of Fogo, icebergs float past in the early summer and whales blow. The first Irish settler, Thomas Burke, arrived here in 1752. The first known grave of an Irish emigrant is up on the hillside: Michael Greene from Carrick-on-Suir. The headstone gets all the spellings right and says he was buried in 1856. He has a magnificent view. There is a faded wreath and a prayer, written on a piece of paper and protected by a plastic bag, propped up against the stone. They were placed there in 2011 by a group from Carrick-on-Suir and the prayer ends with the words: “God bless Michael Greene and all who followed him.”

A few Irish politicians turned up when Tilting was declared a National Historic Site in 2003 and RTÉ did a documentary in 2011. There is a Féile Tilting each September, which last year was linked live to Youghal local radio. And it certainly is freakish and lovely to hear these clear and yearning accents of a people who, after centuries, still look over the Atlantic towards home.

...

The pain of emigration is repeated here, almost as a race memory, and the songs of sorrow and loss are put to new use for the generations gone since the fisheries closed. In Joe Batt’s Arm, Zita Cobb remembers the exact date she left the island for a new life in Ottawa. It was just before she turned 13. Cobb, who went on to make a fortune in fibre optics, came back to Fogo some years ago and started an island regeneration scheme, which is part international arts foundation and part internationally expensive hotel.

The hotel, just opened in June, is a remarkable postmodern building, one end propped up on stilts that are two stories high. It was built, in part, by Irish workers, who were imported, in a gang, all the way from Toronto, because there is a construction boom in St John’s.

Their names are on a map of Ireland pinned to the wall of Foley’s shed: men from Malin, Letterkenny, Westport, and Monaghan. They came here to socialise (that is what happens in Newfoundland “sheds”) and then they too left, leaving a brand new bodhrán, a dead email address, a charitable cheque for a sick child. They went back to Toronto or, some of them, home for a while to Ireland. One of them found a girlfriend in St John’s, and stayed.

...

Ah, authenticity. It’s as rare these days as cod. Outside, the weather shifts as fast as Irish weather – only much bigger. In this part of the world, the storms can kill you, the wilderness can still swallow you, and it starts 10ft outside your door.

The people of Tilting, as elsewhere in remote parts of Canada, look out for each other in a constant and material way. The hospitality is astonishing, the values so communal they seem almost Scandinavian.

These people consider the best part of themselves to be Irish – who am I to suggest that it might actually be Canadian? Besides, this isn’t Canada. It isn’t even Newfoundland.
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-...orld-1.1538579
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Last edited by SignalHillHiker; Mar 20, 2020 at 4:44 PM.
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  #74  
Old Posted Mar 20, 2020, 6:04 PM
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Hard to separate the Irish diaspora from the English and Scottish ones since they're all so closely connected. Most "Irish" people in the US today are probably significantly English and Scottish as well. That's how it is in my family

Anti-Irish sentiment in the US pales in comparison to other ethnic groups. The Irish have been in the US essentially as long as the English. Kind of a packaged deal despite their histories in the Isles. At the peak of the anti-Irish (catholic) movement, you had people whose families were Irish immigrants discriminating against Irish immigrants
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  #75  
Old Posted Mar 20, 2020, 6:13 PM
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Atlantic Canada is basically the "Celtic fringe" of North America.
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  #76  
Old Posted Mar 20, 2020, 6:18 PM
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Originally Posted by IrishIllini View Post
Hard to separate the Irish diaspora from the English and Scottish ones since they're all so closely connected. Most "Irish" people in the US today are probably significantly English and Scottish as well. That's how it is in my family

Anti-Irish sentiment in the US pales in comparison to other ethnic groups. The Irish have been in the US essentially as long as the English. Kind of a packaged deal despite their histories in the Isles. At the peak of the anti-Irish (catholic) movement, you had people whose families were Irish immigrants discriminating against Irish immigrants
There were anti-Catholic riots led by "orange" Irish Protestants in Philadelphia and NYC.
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  #77  
Old Posted Mar 20, 2020, 9:43 PM
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Irish ancestry is more likely to be "remembered" than English, Scottish or Welsh ancestry.

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A group once seen as severely disadvantaged (the term paddy wagon is an ethnic slur referring to the criminality of the Irish ethnic group), became very popular as it moved into the American mainstream, so that whites who have many different ancestors with different European ancestors are more likely to keep an identification with their Irish heritage. Thus Michael Hoult and Joshua Goldstein were able to show how 4.5 million Irish immigrants became 40 million Irish Americans, not because they had exceptionally high fertility, but because the descendants of those Irish immigrants intermarried and their descendants preferred to keep an ethnic identity that was in part Irish.
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/CP...ters_draft.pdf
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  #78  
Old Posted Mar 21, 2020, 7:17 PM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Atlantic Canada is basically the "Celtic fringe" of North America.
It's true. And we played a big role in stopping the Irish American push to become generic American that was happening in New England in the late 1800s. A lot of the most "Irish" people in New England are actually from here. That famous picture of the men eating lunch on the iron beam up in NYC - half of them were born here in Newfoundland. And their kids generally stayed there and became New Yorkers, but aware of their heritage:

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  #79  
Old Posted Mar 21, 2020, 10:27 PM
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Great find.

Irish Newfoundlanders don't really need to assert their Irishness (i.e. as a group distinctive from the mainstream) like Irish Americans do. Yet in the American context it looks like they joined the Irish-American community or became a sort of subgroup within it (as shown by these ironworkers as well as the Bulger family of Massachusetts).
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  #80  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2020, 11:19 PM
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Scituate, Massachusetts - the most Irish town in America:

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-...rica-1.3725294
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