Stereotypes Of Irish Immigrants

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Tal Yeoshoua

AMH2097 - 01 - Fall 2015

Immigration into the United States was not a facile journey for any immigrant group. After a long trip on the ships, ranging from about one to three months across the Atlantic Ocean, immigrants arrived in the United States and were anything but welcomed. The WASPs considered any race different from them “the others” and created stereotypes against them, which made any immigrant group seem unworthy to be in America. The WASPs used political cartoons to stereotype immigrant groups such as the Irish and the Germans. Both the Germans and the Irish were stereotyped to be drunks and the Irish immigrants were thought to be especially violent. In almost all political cartoons, the Irish and the

The man’s face was ape-like and seemed to be angry, with his mouth open as if he was yelling. He was drawn holding a stick in his left hand, which can be used as a weapon, and a bottle of liquor in his right. The Irish man is raising the bottle in the air and it seems as if he wants to throw it at something or someone. Irish men were always represented as small, dark men who always had a beer and a weapon in their hand, and were called Paddy. The three main stereotypes shown in this political cartoon were that the Irish were an inferior race and that they were a violent group of drunks (“The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things” Harper’s Weekly,

England, who despised the Irish and wanted to take over Ireland, told the WASPs that the Irish are violent people. Also, during the New York Draft Riots in 1863, men’s names were picked out randomly and if a man’s name was picked he was drafted. There were two ways to get out of having to join the army and fight in war. A man could either pay money to get out of being drafted, which was expensive, or he could pay to be replaced with an Irish or an African American, who would go in instead of him. Most men paid to be replaced with an Irish or African American, and the Irish sent that money back home to allow their town to send another person over to America, the process known as chain migration. The Irish were fighting in a war for a country that they had no rights in, instead of the WASPs, the people who withheld those rights from them. The Irish got angry and revolted. Of course, they could not take their anger out on the WASPs because they were “inferior” to them, so instead they took their rage out on the African Americans. The Irish and the African Americans were already competing for jobs and were not very fond of each other, which made it easy for the Irish to lash out on them. The riot lasted for a couple weeks and finally ended when the Irish burned