Daily Archives: March 19, 2017

Irish Americans were slaves once too or so a historically inaccurate and dangerously misleading internet meme would have you believe.

The meme comes in many varieties but the basic formula is this: old photos, paintings and engravings from all over the world are combined with text suggesting they are historic images of forgotten Irish slaves.

The myth underlying the meme holds that the Irish not Africans were the first American slaves. It rests on the idea that 17th century American indentured servitude was essentially an extension of the transatlantic slave trade.

Popular among racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and neo-confederate groups, the Irish slave trope is often accompanied by statements to the effect of, Our ancestors suffered and we got over it, why cant you? According to Liam Hogan a librarian and scholar who has tracked the myth references to these Irish slaves are used to derail conversations about racism and inequity.

The principle aim of this propaganda, which aligns with that of the international far-right, is to empty the history of the transatlantic slave trade of its racial element, says Hogan.

The meme has become increasingly visible since 2013. Its trajectory has paralleled the rise of Black Lives Matter and has even used that movements language with graphics, t-shirts and Facebook groups that proclaim, Irish Lives Matter.

In a six-part series on Medium, Hogan deconstructs the images and claims that have fueled the meme. That picture of Irish slave children? Thats actually a photo of young coal mine workers in Pennsylvania in 1911. The one of the Irish man being beaten to death in front of a crowd in the 1800s? Thats really a black man tied to a whipping post and being tortured in the 1920s.

While there is a growing awareness that these arguments are based on misinformation, the fiction is now seen by many as fact thanks to a strange web of mutually reinforcing lies. The lies have also taken on a life beyond the internet.

At a Confederate flag rally in Mississippi in July 2015 one protester told a reporter, There were more white Irish slaves then there were blacks. And the Irish slaves were treated a lot worse than the black slaves.

Those who traffic in this lie minimize and ignore the realities that made slavery distinct from other forms of servitude in the British colonies. African slaves were considered property; Irish indentured servants were not. And though they faced inhumane working conditions, Irish indentured servants could typically decide if they wanted to enter into their labor contracts. Unlike the Africans forced to come to the US as slaves, the servitude of Irish people in the US did not span their entire lifetimes, and did not bind their children to a life of servitude.

The Irish-as-slaves meme has a curious anatomy that Hogan has traced back to self-published books, family genealogy blogs and white supremacist news sites. He attributes much of the misinformation behind the meme to an article published by the Centre for Research on Globalization, a Canadian-based organization that touts its focus on education and humanitarianism. Hogan says that their frequently referenced 2008 article, The Irish Slave Trade The Forgotten White Slaves, has an outsized impact but does not contain a single historically accurate claim or sentence.

Even so, the article has been cited by mainstream news sites like Scientific American, Irish Examiner and Irish Central. In response, more than 80 scholars and supporters have signed an open letter debunking the Global Research article and asking the media to stop their practice of uncritically citing it and related sources. Scientific American responded by heavily revising their story on the topic and the Irish Examiner removed theirs altogether. But Irish Central has made no such revisions and did not respond to a request to comment for this story.

The editor of Global Research, Michel Chossudovsky, defends their decision to keep the story on their website. He wrote in an email that it was, originally published by OpEd News, we do not necessarily endorse it, we have also published critiques of that article by several historians with a view to promoting debate.

Shortly after he replied to PRIs questions, the article was updated with a lengthy editorial note and links to the articles that promote debate on the basis of long-since discredited claims.

The Global Research article is illustrated by the cover of a book, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britains White Slaves in America, which was published by NYU Press in 2008. The books cover, dramatically illustrated with two white fists bound by rope manacles, often appears alongside articles that perpetuate the Irish slave myth.

The authors of the book are British filmmakers Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, who argue that slavery is more a feeling than a system. Slavery, they claim, is not defined by time but by the experience of the subject.

Scholars discredit this assessment. In a review in The Historian, Dr. Dixie Ray Haggard says the book uses sound primary sources to draw conclusions that are plagued by fatal flaws. The most egregious, he writes, is that it deliberately conflates indentured servitude with slavery. ...Rather than explore the complexity of labor and social relations in colonial America and increase our understanding of these institutions, these authors chose to oversimplify and confuse.

Still, the book was reviewed favorably in mainstream news outlets including The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and The New York Review of Books. Co-author Walsh qualified his claims in an interview with NPR that Were not saying the Whites ever suffered quite as much as the worst treated Blacks. Yet the book helped popularize the idea that Irish indentured servants had it just as bad, if not worse, than African slaves.

This Irish slave narrative is the latest in a long history of Irish Americans affirming their own group identity at the expense of black people. In his book, How the Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev shows how in 19th century America, when racial identities had as much to do with national origin as skin color, Irish immigrants strove to be socially classed as white. In order to achieve this status and the privileges that came with it, they routinely and deliberately differentiated themselves from black people by at times violently forcing them into an even lower ranking in the American social order.

They sought to minimize the horrors of slavery then too. Irish workers in antebellum America self-identified as wage slaves, claiming they had it far worse than actual slaves because they werent entitled to benefits like the material comfort and the assurance of work they said slaves enjoyed.

Decades later in 1921, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that Irish anti-blackness has been expressed so continuously and emphatically that there can be no doubt of the hostility of a large proportion of Irish Americans toward Negroes.

Now, as the Irish slave myth festers online and beyond, there is no visibly Irish American movement to answer it. There is no Irish American equivalent to Asians for Black Lives. Irish Americans participate in movements for the rights of African Americans, but they do not announce their heritage as loudly as do proponents of the Irish slave myth.

Leaders within the Catholic church, which has historically served as the moral compass for many Irish Americans, are beginning to grapple with this legacy of anti-blackness. Dr. Kevin Considine, professor of theology at Calumet College of St. Joseph, called for direct responses to implicit, insidious racism in an essay for US Catholic last summer.

Do black lives matter to white Catholics? If so, we need to do more than say the right words, he wrote.

Go here to see the original:

The curious origins of the 'Irish slaves' myth | Public Radio ... - PRI

Irish Americans were slaves once too or so a historically inaccurate and dangerously misleading internet meme would have you believe.

The meme comes in many varieties but the basic formula is this: old photos, paintings and engravings from all over the world are combined with text suggesting they are historic images of forgotten Irish slaves.

The myth underlying the meme holds that the Irish not Africans were the first American slaves. It rests on the idea that 17th century American indentured servitude was essentially an extension of the transatlantic slave trade.

Popular among racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and neo-confederate groups, the Irish slave trope is often accompanied by statements to the effect of, Our ancestors suffered and we got over it, why cant you? According to Liam Hogan a librarian and scholar who has tracked the myth references to these Irish slaves are used to derail conversations about racism and inequity.

The principle aim of this propaganda, which aligns with that of the international far-right, is to empty the history of the transatlantic slave trade of its racial element, says Hogan.

The meme has become increasingly visible since 2013. Its trajectory has paralleled the rise of Black Lives Matter and has even used that movements language with graphics, t-shirts and Facebook groups that proclaim, Irish Lives Matter.

In a six-part series on Medium, Hogan deconstructs the images and claims that have fueled the meme. That picture of Irish slave children? Thats actually a photo of young coal mine workers in Pennsylvania in 1911. The one of the Irish man being beaten to death in front of a crowd in the 1800s? Thats really a black man tied to a whipping post and being tortured in the 1920s.

While there is a growing awareness that these arguments are based on misinformation, the fiction is now seen by many as fact thanks to a strange web of mutually reinforcing lies. The lies have also taken on a life beyond the internet.

At a Confederate flag rally in Mississippi in July 2015 one protester told a reporter, There were more white Irish slaves then there were blacks. And the Irish slaves were treated a lot worse than the black slaves.

Those who traffic in this lie minimize and ignore the realities that made slavery distinct from other forms of servitude in the British colonies. African slaves were considered property; Irish indentured servants were not. And though they faced inhumane working conditions, Irish indentured servants could typically decide if they wanted to enter into their labor contracts. Unlike the Africans forced to come to the US as slaves, the servitude of Irish people in the US did not span their entire lifetimes, and did not bind their children to a life of servitude.

The Irish-as-slaves meme has a curious anatomy that Hogan has traced back to self-published books, family genealogy blogs and white supremacist news sites. He attributes much of the misinformation behind the meme to an article published by the Centre for Research on Globalization, a Canadian-based organization that touts its focus on education and humanitarianism. Hogan says that their frequently referenced 2008 article, The Irish Slave Trade The Forgotten White Slaves, has an outsized impact but does not contain a single historically accurate claim or sentence.

Even so, the article has been cited by mainstream news sites like Scientific American, Irish Examiner and Irish Central. In response, more than 80 scholars and supporters have signed an open letter debunking the Global Research article and asking the media to stop their practice of uncritically citing it and related sources. Scientific American responded by heavily revising their story on the topic and the Irish Examiner removed theirs altogether. But Irish Central has made no such revisions and did not respond to a request to comment for this story.

The editor of Global Research, Michel Chossudovsky, defends their decision to keep the story on their website. He wrote in an email that it was, originally published by OpEd News, we do not necessarily endorse it, we have also published critiques of that article by several historians with a view to promoting debate.

Shortly after he replied to PRIs questions, the article was updated with a lengthy editorial note and links to the articles that promote debate on the basis of long-since discredited claims.

The Global Research article is illustrated by the cover of a book, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britains White Slaves in America, which was published by NYU Press in 2008. The books cover, dramatically illustrated with two white fists bound by rope manacles, often appears alongside articles that perpetuate the Irish slave myth.

The authors of the book are British filmmakers Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, who argue that slavery is more a feeling than a system. Slavery, they claim, is not defined by time but by the experience of the subject.

Scholars discredit this assessment. In a review in The Historian, Dr. Dixie Ray Haggard says the book uses sound primary sources to draw conclusions that are plagued by fatal flaws. The most egregious, he writes, is that it deliberately conflates indentured servitude with slavery. ...Rather than explore the complexity of labor and social relations in colonial America and increase our understanding of these institutions, these authors chose to oversimplify and confuse.

Still, the book was reviewed favorably in mainstream news outlets including The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and The New York Review of Books. Co-author Walsh qualified his claims in an interview with NPR that Were not saying the Whites ever suffered quite as much as the worst treated Blacks. Yet the book helped popularize the idea that Irish indentured servants had it just as bad, if not worse, than African slaves.

This Irish slave narrative is the latest in a long history of Irish Americans affirming their own group identity at the expense of black people. In his book, How the Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev shows how in 19th century America, when racial identities had as much to do with national origin as skin color, Irish immigrants strove to be socially classed as white. In order to achieve this status and the privileges that came with it, they routinely and deliberately differentiated themselves from black people by at times violently forcing them into an even lower ranking in the American social order.

They sought to minimize the horrors of slavery then too. Irish workers in antebellum America self-identified as wage slaves, claiming they had it far worse than actual slaves because they werent entitled to benefits like the material comfort and the assurance of work they said slaves enjoyed.

Decades later in 1921, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that Irish anti-blackness has been expressed so continuously and emphatically that there can be no doubt of the hostility of a large proportion of Irish Americans toward Negroes.

Now, as the Irish slave myth festers online and beyond, there is no visibly Irish American movement to answer it. There is no Irish American equivalent to Asians for Black Lives. Irish Americans participate in movements for the rights of African Americans, but they do not announce their heritage as loudly as do proponents of the Irish slave myth.

Leaders within the Catholic church, which has historically served as the moral compass for many Irish Americans, are beginning to grapple with this legacy of anti-blackness. Dr. Kevin Considine, professor of theology at Calumet College of St. Joseph, called for direct responses to implicit, insidious racism in an essay for US Catholic last summer.

Do black lives matter to white Catholics? If so, we need to do more than say the right words, he wrote.

From PRI's The World 2016 PRI

Read this article:

The curious origins of the 'Irish slaves' myth - KERA News

A migrant worker carries a pole at a World Cup construction site in the Qatari capital Doha. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Life for a migrant worker under Qatars kafala sponsorship system means living under your employers total control over every aspect of your existence from opening a bank account to changing jobs, and even being allowed to leave the country.

This corrupt system starts with recruitment under false pretences in their home countries and entraps them once they set foot in Qatar. Talking to workers in the squalid labour camps has brought home to me how these proud young men, who have left home to build a future, are deprived of dignity and treated in the most inhumane way. Worse, in the years that Ive been visiting the camps, nothing has changed.

Hundreds of these workers succumb every year to the appalling living and working conditions, returning to their home countries in coffins, their deaths callously written off as the price of progress.

The worlds richest country is spending 400m a week on the huge infrastructure programme for 2022, but paying the workers who are making it happen as little as 8 a day. There is no minimum wage, no unions are allowed and even basic protections at work are lacking for most.

Winning the World Cup bid could have been a catalyst for change in Qatar, but it has not been yet. Certainly, nothing has improved for the families of the 13 workers who died in a company labour camp fire last June, or for the 500 workers who lost all their possessions in two more labour camp fires this year. They were offered only $50 in compensation and had to rely on charity for food, clothes and bedding.

Qatars PR machine is still unable to hide the truth. Its government told the UNs International Labour Organisation this month that the exit permit regime for migrant workers has been repealed a blatant lie.

Workers still have to get their employers permission to change jobs and even to leave the country. Appeals to a government committee are being refused at a rate of five a day. Workers learn by text message if they can leave the country or not, and many have been waiting for a month for a decision. The fate of French footballer Zahir Belounis, who was trapped in Qatar for 19 months by his clubs owners after a wage dispute, can befall any one of the nearly 2 million migrant workers there, at any time.

At the ILO, worker and employer delegates are keeping up the pressure on Qatar. Indeed, some multinational construction companies seeking improvement want to negotiate with the global construction union Building and Woodworkers International. But the government wont allow even that.

Right now, countries need to stand up at the ILO and elsewhere to Qatars financial muscle and oppose its use of modern slavery. Those that dont will be held to account.

The Qatari government has repeatedly failed to keep its pledge to reform in the years since it was awarded the World Cup. Each time I have spoken to government representatives, promises are made but usually the same promises they made the last time we spoke.

Fifa, too, has a heavy burden of responsibility, by not making real reform a requirement for hosting its most prestigious and profitable event. Players and fans do care if the tournament is delivered on the basis of slavery, exploitation and death.

Fifa and other global sports bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, are making human rights a requirement in future bids for major events but, right now, Qatars migrant workers urgently need real backing from footballs ultimate authority, as it strives to revive its battered reputation.

Sharan Burrow is general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation

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We must all stand up to the world's richest nation and oppose its use ... - The Guardian

In the summer of 1835, a band of 400 unemployed semiskilled men in Washington, D.C., known as the Mechanics, roamed the streets, drinking heavily and looking for someone to blame for their misfortunes.

Their plight was exacerbated by the nominally free work performed by slaves and free blacks. The Mechanics were agitated at the sight of black men going to work every day, doing jobs that they felt were rightfully theirs. Rather than blame slave owners or the institution of slavery itself, the Mechanics blamed the slaves, and went on a two-week rampage, destroying African-American schools, churches and restaurants. Only when they burned a brothel did greater Washington decide they were carrying things too far.

Labor issues are always complex, and even labor and wage theory advanced by the best minds can, in practice, turn out to be flawed. But as we push more immigrants out the door, a few matters are worthy of consideration.

Those who agitate for a higher minimum wage should actually be pleased. Reducing the supply of labor will drive up the cost of work, meaning that wages at the lower end of the scale will go up. Conversely, opponents of raising the minimum wage who support deportation are at cross purposes. Apparently, the obvious still needs to be stated: You cant suppress wages and the labor force simultaneously.

Perhaps youve noticed that some of the loudest voices for deportation have now grown silent as it occurs to them that they will need to financially compete for workers. If they can get workers at all.

We have long complained that immigrants are taking jobs from native American workers. Now, well get to see if thats true or not. It stands to reason that at some wage point, American workers will agree to harvest lettuce and pick chickens. But that didnt happen in the post-war South, where certain work, such as hoeing cotton, was branded as slave work and more than a few poor whites thought it better to go hungry than to labor in the furrows where black feet had trod.

This meant that those in need of labor had to get creative. Sheriffs arrested black men under the slightest pretext, or no pretext, and threw them in jail where they were effectively sold out to corporations and forced to work the fields, mines or foundries. This form of what Douglas Blackmon of the Wall Street Journal called neoslavery endured for 80 years after the war.

It remains to be seen what will happen when todays industries face the inevitable shortage of bottom-rung labor. Those who wish to see an end to the welfare state might argue that able-bodied people now on the dole would have a choice: do the work or lose your benefits.

This is an understandable position. Unemployment benefits should not be so high that they discourage a person from getting a job; but withholding benefits altogether and forcing a person to accept wages that do not pay for food, shelter and clothing is a form of slavery unto its own.

And it has yet to be worked out how populations of unemployed can be moved hundreds or thousands of miles to where the work is.

No matter what, we will see the effects of deportation in the prices of some of our most basic products, such as produce and poultry, and in the cost of our most basic services, such as landscaping and roofing. For years, business has covered its eyes and ears when hiring its a two-way unholy dance, as immigrants here illegally get work and companies receive artificially cheap labor. If carried out as advertised, President Trumps deportation plan will put a serious crimp in this practice.

It is possible to have fewer Latinos in this country, if that is the goal. But it means the price we pay for many items will go up. And, paradoxically, it will cost us a pretty penny in tax money for the privilege of paying a higher price for these goods and services. Forget the wall deportation alone is not an inexpensive proposition.

And finally, notice that the Social Security Administration receives $12 billion annually in contributions from undocumented immigrants and their employers, money that will go to retired Americans, not to the immigrants who paid into the fund.

Frankly, undocumented immigration sounds like a very good deal for Americans and, at best, a tenuous proposition for the immigrants. So, if the champions of deportation really want to promote racial purity, they should be honest with the American public and just say so. Because from an economic standpoint, the arguments just dont hold up.

Originally posted here:

Who would replace immigrant workers? | Tim Rowland ... - Herald-Mail Media