At 04:54 PM 11/18/1997 -0600, you wrote:
>I was glad to see Heather Grigg's professional response offering an
>exchange of information to Stewart-Abernathy's attack on the NEw Orleans
>Irish paper. I know the author and their work and, although there are
>some legitimate questions to be raised, I was a little taken aback by
>Stewart-Abernathy's venom.
Thank you. I will reply to some of the questions you raised from my own
research. I have been living and doing anthropological research among the
Irish in Sunnyside (Queens), New York for six years now and through
extensive networks of friends and trips to Ireland, as well as input from
many Irish and Irish American historians, I have been formulating my own
profile of the Irish immigrant experience. This, in addition to extensive
historical reading has led me to seek to understand the Irish in America
"from the inside out" as Henry Glassie puts it. I was not trying to imply
that the Irish then or now do not have a proclivity for drink. However, to
approach this issue from the Anglo-Protestant temperance angle that many
Americans have toward drink, even today, defeats trying to understand the
patterns of this group of people. I would say that in response to your
suggestion that the Irish were hypochondriacs, that you have to consider
the condition in which many Irish were arriving in America, especially in
the 1840's and 50's (An Gorta Mor, The Great Famine was from 1845 - 1855).
The famine itself did not kill nearly as many people as the disease brought
on by the famine, especially in light of weakened immune systems from lack
of food. The ships on which many Irish travelled were referred to as Coffin
Ships because of the Typhus and Cholera spread by their passengers. The
conditions in some of the tenements in New York also spread disease.
Rather than assuming the Irish were drunks because the Anglos said they
were or because they were using patent medicines, I prefer to look at a
number of variables. Stereotypes are very dangerous and lead us on a
slippery slope, often to the wrong conclusions. I say yes, the Irish did
and do drink more often than some Americans (so, incidently do Russians,
Poles, French, etc). In the case of these groups in America the pub plays
a very important role in the culture of immigrants. You find jobs there,
you network there, all of the Irish newspapers and sometimes imported food
items are found there. It is also a place for storytelling, and comraderie
(the Irish say ceol, caint agus craic, which means music, talk, and,
roughly, fun). If I were a tenant in the tenements of 19th-century New
York(or one of 6 boys living in a cramped apartment in Queens in 1997)I
would head to the pub to get out of my small space and be among friends.
My second point is that patent medicines are also considerably more
expensive than booze. Why drink a $1 bottle of Radway's Ready Remedy when
you could have a 5 cent shot of whiskey or bottle of beer at your local
(pub)? I understand that stereotypes may hold the seeds of truth, but you
must consider who's truth that is. To the Irish, from inside their world,
there is a completely different cultural approach. Mind you I'm not
addressing Catholic temperence groups...that's another issue.
A good book on stereotyes of the Irish is L. Perry Curtis's Apes and
Angels: The Irish In Victorian Literature, Smithsonian Press, reprinted
this year.
Also: Paddy and the Republic by Dale Knobel, Wesleyan University Press, 1986
and Noel Ignatiev: How the Irish Became White, Routledge, 1995
all of these are good books to start with when addressing the Irish, race,
ethnicity, politics, and stereotypes.
I hope I have not been too long winded, please feel free to reply off list
if you want to.
Sincerely,
Heather Griggs
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