The Irish diaspora

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Docere

I would agree with that. They're definitely not as distinctive as Italian Americans. There are some Irish Catholic pockets in the Northeast and Chicago but in fact most Americans of Irish ancestry are Protestant and are pretty dispersed across the country.

I also read a study (probably from the 70s or 80s) showing Irish Catholic Americans were actually more likely to marry WASPs than Italians, contrary to the common assertion about Irish-Italian marriages being especially high. As you say, they've been in the country longer and their ancestors spoke English.

is that for real? via cleveland and ny i never met a protestant irish in my life. i mean i know they must exist based on the ireland map, but its a mystery to me.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

is that for real? via cleveland and ny i never met a protestant irish in my life. i mean i know they must exist based on the ireland map, but its a mystery to me.

yeah, that was a little head-spinny for me when i first learned that a majority of "irish" people in america are protestants.

being from chicago, and of deep "chicago irish catholic" roots, i had always operated under the assumption that "irish" and "catholic" were freaking synonyms.

[Docere]

I think the distinction is that the Irish American community is Catholic but the majority of Americans who report Irish as one of their ancestries are Protestant.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

is that for real? via cleveland and ny i never met a protestant irish in my life. i mean i know they must exist based on the ireland map, but its a mystery to me.

They're Scots-Irish.

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

They're Scots-Irish.

Correct, and they populated much of the southern and sount central US in the 19th century.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Joe Biden has a strong Irish identity. Does Biden seem "white ethnic"?

He also has patrilineal English and French ancestry; he’s a typical white American — a mutt of Western/Northern European heritage. Would he seem more “ethnic” to you if his name was Joe Finnegan (his mother’s maiden name)?

[Docere]

A lot of people with strong "Irish American" identities seem to have some English ancestry. Which isn't surprising given their shared roots in the British Isles, that their immigrant ancestors were English-speaking, and they've been in the US a long time.

[Quixote]

^ Totally agree. I’m just wondering what “threshold” does an Irish Catholic have to meet to qualify as “ethnic”? Is it an overtly Irish name (i.e. “Cathal Sheehan” or “Siobhan Murphy”)? Assimilated but pure Irish Americans who wear their heritage on their sleeve, yet are 3+ generations removed from Ireland and have no familial ties to the country? Or is it simply being a descendant of Irish Famine emigrants who built Boston, Philadelphia, and NYC? It seems to me that the idea of Irish Catholic being “ethnic” is largely a cultural identifier tied more to legacy and perception (Boston or NYC accent; policeman or firefighter) and less to tangible qualities like lack of admixture, owning an restaurant/pub, or actually speaking the language? Is Rosie O’Donnell, who’s of pure Irish lineage and whose father emigrated from Ireland, not as “American” as it gets? What about Conan O’Brien?

[Steely Dan]

"Irish Americans" are a legit ethnic group.

I mean what other ethnic group dyes a freaking river green to celebrate itself?





Source: https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/3/17...me-lapse-video


Sorry, I was just downtown yesterday for the big annual spectacle, so it's fresh in my mind.

[MAC123]

Side note on that, before anyone says anything, that is completely safe and does not harm the river environment at all.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by JMKeynes

Irish are clearly a discreet and visible ethnic group. Anyone who doubts that needs only to go to an Irish pub in the Bronx or Yonkers filled cops and fireman.

No one is going to confuse the McGarrys with fourth generation Harvard alums from Connecticut.

Sounds like the line between "ethnic" and "non-ethnic" Irish Catholic comes down to socioeconomic factors.

Accountant Sean Murtagh, policeman Sean Murphy, and firefighter Sean McDonagh are neighbors, friends, and take the LIRR into Manhattan together; all three are pure Irish. Two are "ethnic" and one isn't?

[Docere]

And Archie Bunker (who also lived in Astoria I think) was supposed to be a WASP but came across as New York Irish through and through. His son-in-law was a Polish American from Chicago, but had a NYC accent.

[Crawford]

As a city geek it bothers me that Archie lived in Astoria. There's no block in Astoria that remotely looks like the Bunker block. Definitely has the Glendale-Maspeth-Middle Village look.

[Docere]

I sort of see the old time Irish New York accent as equivalent to London's cockney accent. The working class white Protestants that predated the Irish probably haven't been a factor in over a century in any NYC neighborhood, and the Irish are the white ethnic group with the longest roots in the city (though few left in NYC proper anymore).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

As a city geek it bothers me that Archie lived in Astoria. There's no block in Astoria that remotely looks like the Bunker block. Definitely has the Glendale-Maspeth-Middle Village look.

Yeah, that one annoys me too, especially since the actual house they used for the show is in Glendale. But they were pretty loose with reality in the Norman Lear TV universe. They never explained how a woman living in Chicago's Cabrini-Green projects was working as a maid in Westchester County, NY.

[Docere]

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

Total Irish ancestry

Boston 969,587
Chicago 984,300
New York 1,843,803
Philadelphia 1,073,644

Irish single ancestry

Boston 332,025
Chicago 234,561
New York 479,221
Philadelphia 262,215

Interesting data.

As discussed in another thread recently, it does look like Boston's Irish are a little less mutted-up than the others.

(I can say that because I'm a textbook euro-mutt Chicagoan myself with some degree of "Irish" ancestry.)

Are those the "big 4" of Irish ancestry in the US?

[Docere]

Yup, interesting to see Boston at #4 for Irish ancestry, but #2 for single ancestry.

[mrnyc]

interesting about the irish in america and the cleveland irish:


Certain family names seem to keep reappearing among the Cleveland Irish and, at the same time, other Irish family names, somewhat common elsewhere, are seldom to be found here. At first glance this phenomenon seems baffling to the non-Irish. But the explanation is rather simple:

The vast majority of Cleveland's Irish have their family origin in County Mayo in the west of Ireland.

For reasons that can only be explained by the clannishness of the first immigrants who came out to America during the two great famines (1845-53 and 1874-79), it seems apparent that some people from one county decided to go to one inland American city and others to another.

Chicago, for example, was settled by people whose names indicate they were almost exclusively from County Galway.

New York is populated by Irish from Cork, Tipperary and Killarney;

and South Boston by people from Wexford and Rosscommon.

The pattern of settlement by the Irish in the United States followed to a remarkable degree the clannishness of the counties in Ireland.


more:
http://www.clevelandmemory.org/iac/excerpts/Irfrom.html

https://case.edu/ech/articles/i/irish

[Docere]

Then there's Newfoundland where the Irish are of pre-Famine origin.

The vast majority of Irish in Newfoundland arrived from the counties of Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Dingle, Kerry, and Cork. No other provinces in Canada or U.S. state drew such an overwhelming proportion of their immigrants from so geographically compact an area in Ireland over so prolonged a period of time.

Waterford city was the primary port of embarkation. Most migrants came from within a day's journey to the city, or its outport at Passage, 10 km (6 mi) down river in Waterford Harbour. They were drawn from parishes and towns along the main routes of transport and communication, both river and road, converging on Waterford and Passage. New Ross and Youghal were secondary centres of transatlantic embarkation. Old river ports such as Carrick on Suir and Clonmel on the River Suir, Inistioge and Thomastown on the River Nore, and Graiguenamanagh on the River Barrow were important centers of recruitment. So were the rural parishes along these navigable waterways.

Probably the principal motivation for migration was economic distress in the homeland. The population almost doubled between 1785 and 1835, the main period of emigration. Land scarcity, unemployment, underemployment, and the promise of higher wages attracted young Irish women and men to Newfoundland. Irrespective of economic or social origins, almost all Irish moved primarily to better their economic lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Newfoundlanders