How the Irish Became White: Race, Labor, and Identity

The correlation between Eastern European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and newly freed Black Americans during Reconstruction is frequently drawn by social scientists and historians. Many conclude that the treatment of newly freed Black Americans — and especially Irish immigrants — was similar, as both groups were seen as inexhaustible sources of low-wage labor to fuel the industrial revolution in the United States. It is for this reason that a comparison between works addressing each of these two cultures is historically appropriate, as both groups were subjugated and disenfranchised from social and official rights and opportunities.

In How the Irish Became White, Noel Ignatiev examines the grey areas in the social and political definition of "white" as it applied to new immigrants, and to the Irish in particular. In The Wages of Whiteness, David Roediger dissects the same issues as they applied to Black Americans and to others who were considered outside the boundaries of "white" culture. Together, these two works offer complementary perspectives on one of the most consequential and contested categories in American history: whiteness as a social and political construction.

Roediger analyzes personal as well as socio-political occurrences that altered the manner in which a person self-identified — through lifestyle or action — as "white" or as "other." Ignatiev, on the other hand, focuses more specifically on the Irish experience, and in particular on how Irish Americans participated in struggles to unify culture, partly by becoming activists for their own causes and partly by supporting abolitionist movements and other civil rights efforts. Each work clearly defines the character of the period, but through differing resources and styles.

Roediger begins his work with a personal, autobiographical introduction that sets the tone and begins to define the cultural context — and explains why one individual, namely the author himself, would choose not to assimilate into "white" identity but would rather embrace his own historical culture. Ignatiev begins his work by describing the introduction of Irish Americans to causes revolving around the abolition of slavery. He does this by tracing the influence of an Irish political and social hero who was an ardent abolitionist, and how he and his followers attempted to persuade Irish Americans to come out against slavery and support emancipation.

One way these two works can be compared is through analyzing the thesis of each. Though both full-length works contain many interwoven messages, each author sets out to discuss ideas revolving around the definition of "whiteness." As the title suggests, The Wages of Whiteness examines race partly within the context of labor. Roediger writes:

"This book will argue that working class formation and the systematic development of a sense of whiteness went hand in hand for the U.S. white working class. Nonetheless, the privileging of class over race is not always productive or meaningful. To set race within social formations is absolutely necessary, but to reduce race to class is damaging." (Roediger 1999, 8)

The power of this assessment is that the book then undertakes a demonstrative contextual analysis of the manner in which the "other" was pressured — by white society, politics, and economic need — to identify as "white." Roediger stresses that those who were the first to do so, contrary to their earlier leanings as ardent abolitionists, did so under pressure to be accepted as part of the "white" working class.

According to both Roediger and Ignatiev, the conflict between Lincoln and Douglas during the presidential campaign brought the issue to a head for many Irish Americans and their fellow Eastern European immigrants, as many were firmly aligned with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was at that time most insistent on the primacy of the "white" male in all aspects of American life.

In some areas of the country, the Irish held a great deal of influence and power within the Democratic Party. Though the Democratic candidate was Douglas — a Southern man — his nomination was suffused with "all white" sentiment. His aim was to broaden the definition of white to include many who had previously been considered less than white, while entirely excluding Black Americans prior to abolition. Lincoln, by contrast, was a Republican in a relatively new party that held greater aspirations for abolition and at least limited Black inclusion than the Democrats did.

In a sense, the early Irish — and the general white working class — involvement in the Democratic Party aligned them with a party that had no desire to assimilate Black Americans but wished wholeheartedly to extend "white" influence to their own class. This position was sharply at odds with Irish beliefs regarding the abolition of Black slavery, beliefs that had been a part of their base culture. Ignatiev points this out effectively in his early discussion of the Irish-born movement to realign Irish Americans with an abolitionist stance, despite their strong Democratic Party ties, and he returns to this dividing issue in numerous later discussions as well (1995, 7).

Establishing a broader sense of "white" to include the Irish was essential to Democratic alignment, even after the presidential election was over and even after the secession movement was overturned by the bloody Civil War. According to both authors, the only way the nation would survive — before and after the war — was through an expansion of "white" identity to include newer immigrants. Though many of those immigrants were staunch abolitionists, the notion of keeping the Black race apart remained powerful. It is fair to say that the antebellum and Reconstruction era was even more troubled by the question of Black exclusion, but that "white" identity had by then been expanded to include the Irish and other recent arrivals, largely for the purpose of economic rebuilding after the war. The Irish were broadly categorized as "not slaves" and began a fight to be included in the nation's growth and development (Roediger 1999; Ignatiev 1995).

Both works address the same core issues regarding the expansion of "white" identity. Roediger is arguably more rigorous, though less immediately accessible, on the subject of resistance to a "white" identification in favor of retaining more egalitarian and revolutionary ideals. He accomplishes this by opening with an autobiographical introduction that aligns the writer as a member of the resistant group, seeking — by personal example — the dissolution of the extreme racial divide that dominated America during his formative years. He also associates the Irish with resistance to dominant labeling through economics and faith in later portions of the work (Roediger 1999). Roediger offers a notably academic voice, demonstrating how even revolutionary ideals — such as the socialist and Marxist inclination toward inclusion of the proletariat in all aspects of civil life — shaped the development of what it meant to be "white" in America (Roediger 1999, 6).