Journal Entry "Emigrants from Erin"

Stephen Greene

English 48B

February 11, 2011

Journal #15, Ronald Takaki

"Victims of English prejudice and repression in Ireland, the Irish in America often redirected their rage in a pecking order.  'They [the Irish] have been oppressed enough themselves to be oppressive whenever they have a chance,' commented an observer, 'and the despised and degraded condition of the blacks, presenting to them an very ugly resemblance of their own home circumstances, naturally excites in them the exercise of the disgust and contempt of which they themselves are very habitually the objects"(151, Takaki).

"His initial teaching experience was at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught the first Black History course offered at that institution.^[1] One of his students on the first day asked what the class was going to learn about "revolutionary tactics," and he later recalled that his immediate response was to suggest that he hoped students would learn skills of critical thinking and effective writing—and that these could be quite revolutionary"(Ronald Takaki, Wikipedia).

Takaki uses the words of an observer to help describe the basis for the Irish view of blacks at the time.  That time, was after the destruction and ruin that the potato famine had wrought sent thousands of Irish to America in a desperate flea for survival.  They arrived in America to find a land in stark contrast to what they had heard, and expected; the typical example of them being surprised at the lack of gold paving the streets provides a good metaphor for the general feeling of arriving to a new life and land that does not live up to the immigrants great expectations.

The quoted observer points gracefully points out the roots of much of the Irish anti-African American feelings at the time.  They stemmed from lack of space and jobs, just as many white Americans, nativists,  turned this fear to hatred towards immigrants such as the Irish, they saw the black population as threatening to their jobs, houses, money, and share at success in America.  However, the Irish also gained important 'whiteness' from scapegoating blacks and joining in with an unfair majority.  They were angered at seeing what they saw as an ugly, but similar creature.  The Irish were constantly compared to apes and to blacks in the white media, they lived in similar financial, spacial, and geographical situations, and were excited to racism by this.

The idea of a people being "oppressed enough themselves to be oppressive whenever they have a chance" is interesting and relates to many other situations.  Specifically to the story "Maggie" by Stephen Crane, in which the mother clearly shows the manifestation of this thought pattern.  She has dealt with horrid conditions for much of her life, the story hints and history tells, and she changes into a terribly oppressive figure because of it.  She routinely beats her children, chases her husband out of the house, and destroys anything resembling nurture in the household.  She rips curtains down, up-ends the furniture and drunkenly curses at the children.  This idea of being oppressed as a cause for oppressive behavior also applies to her children's behavior.  Her son is constantly in fights in the streets and tries to oppress, or conquer and control others.  Her daughter becomes a prostitute, no doubt feeling the strains of oppression from her surroundings.  It does not take too big of a leap to see her, in the future, in her mother's position, with violent, oppressive bursts of anger caused by her past and current oppressive circumstances.