Every generation, in order to impress the next, comes up with tall tales about hardship and discrimination. Take for example the parent/grandparent who impresses how difficult life was in their youth: "I had to walk five miles to school, through the snow, carrying my little sister on my shoulders, and hauling our books in my little red wagon."
That is one of the more benign stories.
My mother always told of having to gather breakfast eggs while fending off the rooster, and then the "attack goose" who would chase across the yard as she carried the egg basket in one hand and pulled along the milk cow with another.
Yes, Mom, we all acknowledge that Depression babies had a harder time than those born after World War II.
The stories become more serious when ethnic and religious groups talk about hardships and discrimination. In fact, there is usually a kernel of truth in the tales and legends, even though sometimes the details aren't what they seem.
[One can only imagine what the 19th century Irish immigrant is saying to the American Black during a discussion of which group was more put-upon by mainstream Americans, whose members ironically suffered similar hardships and acts of discrimination in earlier times, either in North America or in the countries of origin.]
Here is Kathy Shaidle at NewsRealBlog:
My NewsReal colleague Michelle Hortsman has penned a fine post espousing an even finer sentiment: that the Irish should serve as a great example to other ethnic newcomers; despite breathtaking, backbreaking hardship, they eventually embraced the American melting-pot model and assimilated into the broader culture, without losing their distinctive cultural and religious traditions.
The Irish also managed to emerge from their experiences without (much) residual resentment towards non-Irish Americans. And Need I add, Irish Americans have served valiantly in the armed forces, are legendarily gallant firefighters and police officers, and have contributed boundless laughter, literature and music to their adopted home.
However, Hortsman leaves out a few things; for example, the reason "nativists" hated these newcomers enough to burn down Catholic convents and call for mass Irish deportation as that, well the Irish were for the most part uneducated drunken brawlers (hence the term "Paddy Wagon", and the short lived national appeal of Prohibition).
Fortunately, a tiny cadre of priests and nuns led laypeople to embrace education, (relative) civility and integration, hence the coast to coast network of parochial schools and St. Someone hospitals that were once the flower of American Catholicism.
In other words, the average Irishman was shamed from within his community and without, to better himself. Those were the days ...
As well, I must take issue with Hortsman's reference to those "No Irish Need Apply" signs of song and story. According to one historian, they never existed.
Richard Jensen of the University of Illinois studied the issue and wrote:
The fact that Irish American vividly “remember” NINA [No Irish Need Apply} signs is a curious historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists.
The complete absence of evidence suggests that probably zero such signs were seen at commercial establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor recruiters, anywhere in America, at any time.
Irish Americans all have heard about these signs—and remember elderly relatives insisting they existed. The late Tip O’Neill remembered the signs from his youth in Boston in 1920s; Senator Ted Kennedy reported the most recent sighting, telling the Senate during a civil rights debate that he saw the signs when growing up.
And we all know how reliable Senator Kennedy's accounts of his personal experiences can be.)
[But does that mean that these signs didn't exist at private residences or that employers directed agencies NOT to send Irish applicants? It stands to reason that this legend must have come from somewhere. Perhaps a graduate student could research this question.]
On my own blog, I'll happily speculate about what all this says about Irish psychology; here, we need only to remind ourselves that we live in an age in which victims are the new heroes, in which fake Holocaust survivors (and Righteous Gentiles), fake Vietnam veterans, fake alien abductions and fake rape victims and Muslim-hate-crime-targets (to name only a few) are accorded a temporary degree of renown and respect. Identity politics and all.
PS: I know they are four Yorkshiremen; play along with me...
[This is hilarious!!!]
For those youngsters who came along after the heyday of Monty Python,
... the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch is a parody of nostalgic conversations about humble beginnings or difficult childhoods. Four Yorkshiremen reminisce about their upbringing, and as the conversation progresses, they try to outdo one another, their accounts of deprived childhoods becoming increasingly absurd.
The sketch was originally written and performed for the 1967 British television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show by the show's four writer-performers: Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman.
Today we have the same identity-politics victimization syndrome among the world's refugees. Here in the United, the "most put-upon" seem to be Mexican/Central Americans and Muslims.
Both groups are milking the victim card for everything it's worth.
Remember that immigrants are supposed to assimilate into the mainstream, not the other way around.