...from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called
'path breaking, ' 'seminal, ' 'essential, ' a 'must read.' How the
Irish Became White is such a study.' John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois
Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts,
Amherst
The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a
homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded
them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country - a land of
opportunity - they found a very different form of social hierarchy,
one that was based on the color of a person's skin. Noel Ignatiev's
1995 book - the first published work of one of America's leading and
most controversial historians - tells the story of how the oppressed
became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved
acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that
they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans
than the nativists. This is the story of How the Irish Became
White.