Irish like me: the case for discrimination in pictorial depiction
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sharrona Pearl, Ph.D.
Sharrona Pearl, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Communication, has published an article in the journal
Éire-Ireland (Volume 44, pp. 171-199) titled “White, with a Class-Based Blight: Drawing Irish Americans.”
Based on research of images depicting Irish Americans throughout the 19th century, Dr. Pearl builds a case supporting the argument that whiteness as an identity is not free of discrimination and repression. Irish immigrants were often depicted with specific images that defined them as Irish – dress, facial features, habits, morals, and language, to name a few.
Article Introduction:
“Let me make one thing clear at the outset: Irish Americans were not black. Despite similar economic conditions, they were not treated as blacks legally, politically, or culturally. That is not to say that they escaped discrimination, nor does it minimize their suffering in the Great Famine of the 1840s as they fled from death and disease. Rather, this essay points out that the respective sufferings—and triumphs—of nineteenth-century Irish Americans and African Americans were different. From their arrival in the United States, Irish Americans suffered various forms of cultural prejudices that were expressed in caricature representations, but they were protected from the legal discrimination facing African Americans. Whiteness did not automatically confer freedom from repression and discrimination, nor did repression and discrimination automatically confer a designation of nonwhiteness or blackness.
“This distinction is, by now, familiar. Many scholars, including Noel Ignatiev, Catherine Eagan, Kevin Kenny, and Diane Negra, have explored the relationship between Irish and blacks in the United States and Great Britain. This scholarship, particularly Ignatiev’s controversial
How the Irish Became White (1992), has sparked debates about the status of the Irish, debates that, in turn, have contributed to the growing and often controversial field of whiteness studies. Rather than jump straight into the fray, I will approach the question from a perspective anchored in the visual representation of the Irish and the African American. The rich visual resources in the Prints and Photographs Department of the Library of Congress offer an opportunity to evaluate the status of Irish Americans through their representation in caricatures appearing in an array of illustrated magazines, newspapers, and independently circulated lithographs.”