More Than Whiteness

Recently, I attended a benefit concert for the Irish Repertory Theater, celebrating 35 years of the company’s musicals—from the works of George M. Cohan and Lerner and Lowe to Meet Me in St. Louis to Finian’s Rainbow. The attendees, dressed in fashionable green and red, heard songs that ranged from the toe-tapping and fast-paced to the deeply sentimental.

In my experience, the Irish Rep and the Irish Arts Center offer among New York City’s most consistently impressive dramatic performances. At their theaters, you can see works from Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O’Neill up to Frank and Malachy McCourt. Among the high points: Deirdre Kinahan’s The Savior, Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney and Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson’s Good Vibrations, which chronicles the story of Terri Hooley, the promoter of the 1970s punk scene in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In an important yet largely overlooked study of Irish identity in American culture, Diane Negra, a professor of film studies at University College Dublin, and a group of contributors argue that “Irishness has emerged as an idealized ethnicity, one with which large numbers of people around the world and particularly in the United States, choose to identify.” That’s certainly true. Irrespective of your ethnic background, on St. Patrick’s Day, we’re all Irish.

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But Negra goes further and asserts that Irishness has become “a means of claiming an ethnic identity while maintaining the benefits of whiteness.” It’s no doubt right that in this country’s racially bifurcated society, ethnic identity among those of European descent does at times serve as a way to claim a distinctive heritage of suffering, oppression and victimization while enjoying relative privilege.

A 2014 study by Jennifer Nugent Duffy, entitled Who’s Your Paddy?, shows how Irish immigrants to Yonkers, N.Y., from the mid-19th century onward, were socialized about race and how “disparaging people of color is a crucial component of this race consciousness.” She argues that Irish immigrants responded to racial hazing “by claiming adherence to the same standards of order, hard work, family, faith and loyalty that [had] been used to assess their own racial fitness.”

Negra and Nugent Duffy’s scholarship are significant contributions to whiteness studies, which chronicle how European ethnic groups pursued and embraced a white identity and adopted racist attitudes as a way to elevate their social status. It’s true: various European immigrant groups did seek to distance themselves from African Americans and other nonwhite populations to integrate more fully into American society and gain economic and social advantages. However, focusing exclusively on this theme greatly oversimplifies the complex nature of European American ethnic identities.

A significant portion of Irish American identity is rooted in the historical context of exile, particularly the mass emigration during the Great Famine of 1845 and 1852 and subsequent waves of Irish immigration. This experience fostered a deep sense of loss and nostalgia for the “old country,” which has persisted across generations​.

Irish Catholic immigrants and their descendants have also maintained a strong cultural memory of resistance to British colonial rule. This historical struggle against oppression and for self-determination has profoundly shaped Irish American identity, fostering a sense of ethnic solidarity and hostility toward many British policies​.

The Catholic Church has been a cornerstone of identity for many Irish Americans, providing a sense of community, continuity and cultural preservation, but also, in other cases, provoking resistance to the Church’s policies and tenets. A commitment to maintaining close-knit family structures is central to Irish American culture.

Euro-ethnic identities are complex and involve much more than racism and include legacies of activism and advocacy. While some Irish Americans did embrace racism to elevate their status, others were active in progressive movements and solidarity efforts with other marginalized groups. Only by acknowledging these multiple dimensions of Irish American culture can we begin to understand what it means to be Irish in America.

With the exception of John Travolta’s heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, Hollywood’s preferred narrative of urban ethnicity has centered on Irish Catholics. Perhaps you remember the old quip about Hollywood’s Jews delivering (Irish) Catholicism to white Protestants. From 1925’s Little Annie Rooney, 1931’s Public Enemy and 1938’s Angels With Dirty Faces, Boys Town and In Old Chicago, to 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1944’s The Fighting Sullivans, 1954’s On the Waterfront, 1982’s The Verdict, 1992’s Far and Away, 1997’s Good Will Hunting, 2002’s Gangs of New York and 2003’s Mystic River, Irish Americans symbolized urban, working-class whites.

Scholarly studies of white ethnic identity, too, have often focused on Irish Americans. Three questions dominate these historical and sociological studies:

1. What constitutes Irish American identity apart from shamrocks, St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish flag, the Celtic cross, the Claddagh ring, the Irish pub, step dancing and music played with the fiddle, the tin whistle, the bodhrán and the flute?
2. How has the Irish experience of famine, poverty, migration and anticolonial resistance shaped both Irish and Irish American identities and mindsets and self-presentation and self-portrayal?
3. To what extent has a distinctive Irish American identity faded and been absorbed into a composite “white” identity or become a sentimental attachment to a particular history and certain cultural symbols, with few practical consequences?

Any serious attempt to grapple with those questions ought to begin not with social science, but with Irish and Irish American literature, which offers an essential window into Irish identity.

Let’s begin with a number of works that address themes of resilience, cultural identity and the pursuit of the American dream.

• James T. Farrell’s three Studs Lonigan novels depict the Irish American community in Chicago, including its social norms, religious practices, cultural expectations and the challenges of growing up in an Irish American family. The Catholic Church is a significant presence in the novels, representing both a source of community and a restrictive force and illustrating the tensions between traditional values and modern desires. The novels also depict the harsh working conditions and exploitation that many Irish Americans faced, with Studs’s aspirations for a better life continually thwarted by economic realities.

Vividly portraying the rough world of urban gang culture, the trilogy reveals the complex social hierarchies and conflicts within the urban melting pot and lays bare the allure of street life for young men seeking identity and the racism and ethnic tensions that existed between different immigrant groups. Central to the books’ narrative arc is Studs’s inability to achieve his dreams and his descent into a life of failure, underscoring the harsh realities faced by many who sought the American dream but were unable to attain it.

• Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, set in the early 20th century, follows Francie Nolan as she grows up in a Brooklyn tenement. The novel explores the impact of growing up in poverty, family instabilities and conflicts, the threats (including rape) that young working-class women faced and the challenges of maintaining one’s cultural heritage while striving for the American dream.
• Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah examines the political landscape and the role of ethnic identity in American politics. Focusing on the career of Frank Skeffington, an Irish American mayor of a New England city, the novel addresses themes of political corruption, loyalty and the influence of ethnic communities in shaping local politics.

Certain themes, tropes and, yes, stereotypes have run through classic 20th- and 21st-century Irish and Irish American literature, rooted in historical realities, self-depictions and cultural perceptions, reinforcing certain images of Irish cultural identity.

Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, with its portrait of an intense, deeply troubled Irish American family grappling with addiction, illness and unresolved tensions, has, without a doubt, influenced later depictions of Irish family dysfunction that is inextricable coupled with passionate emotional and economic support.

A host of Irish and Irish American dramas explore the conflicts between personal desires and Catholic religiosity and the ways that the Church has influenced social norms, values and individual behavior. Through themes of guilt, repression and the quest for redemption, Catholicism serves as a cultural backdrop that influences the characters’ identities and aspirations. Many of these works critique the Church’s role in perpetuating social inequalities and rigid gender norms and exacerbating feelings of failure, inadequacy and defectiveness.

James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which traces the religious and intellectual awakening of Stephen Dedalus, who struggles with the rigid Catholic upbringing imposed on him by his family and society, offers a particularly noteworthy exploration of the more oppressive aspects of Catholic doctrine and the personal costs of rebelling against Church tenets.

The clash between tradition and modernity is another theme that has often run through Irish and Irish American dramas. A notable example is Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), set in the summer of 1936 in the fictional village of Ballybeg, County Donegal, during a traditional Celtic harvest celebration. Blending nostalgia with the Irish past’s harsh realities, the play depicts the encroachment of modernity on traditional rural life and the tension between pagan traditions and Catholic values. Dance serves as a metaphor for escape from hardships and constraints, albeit temporarily.

Many Irish and Irish American novels and plays explore the themes of longing and loss resulting from the history of Irish emigration. Powerful examples include

• Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn, which tells the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman who immigrates to Brooklyn in the 1950s in search of better opportunities and the feelings of homesickness and the emotional turmoil she experiences after leaving her family behind and struggles with the pull between her new life and her Irish roots.
• Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, which recounts the author’s impoverished childhood in Limerick and the longing for a better life and the pain of leaving loved ones behind.
• Roddy Doyle’s The Deportees and Other Stories, a collection of tales that explore the interactions and tensions between different cultures, the longing for home and the challenges of adapting to new environments.
• Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!, a play that centers on Gar O’Donnell, a young man preparing to leave his small Irish town for a new life in America. The play is notable for its portrayal of Gar’s internal conflict, depicted through interactions between his public and private personas.

Among the most controversial themes that run through many dramas is the use and abuse of alcohol as a social lubricant and as a coping mechanism in dealing with a variety of severe economic, psychological and social stresses. These literary works reveal drinking’s communal aspects and its more destructive consequences.

• James Joyce’s Dubliners portrays characters using alcohol to navigate social interactions and to seek temporary relief from their frustrations.  Alcohol use is depicted as a common social activity that fosters camaraderie but also highlights personal failures and social stagnation. Characters often find solace in pubs, which serve as communal spaces for both bonding and escape​.
• In Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, Captain Jack Boyle frequently turns to alcohol to escape his responsibilities and the harsh realities of his life. However, alcohol also exacerbates his family’s problems and underscores the futility of Jack’s avoidance behaviors​.
• Angela’s Ashes vividly depicts the author’s father’s alcoholism as a means of coping with unemployment, poverty and the pressures of being an immigrant in America. Alcoholism is portrayed as both a symptom and a cause of the family’s dire circumstances. 
• Long Day’s Journey Into Night portrays substance abuse as a response to deep-seated emotional trauma and familial dysfunction. The characters’ addictions serve as both a source of temporary solace and a destructive force that exacerbates their isolation and despair​.
• In Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments, which follows a group of young working-class Dubliners who form a band, alcohol is a constant presence. Drinking reflects the economic pressures faced by the characters and their desire to find a sense of purpose and community through music. It also underscores the social challenges they face and the escape they seek from their mundane realities.

Finally, there is the issue of British colonialism and the Irish responses, whether through resistance, accommodation or complicity. Through their works, authors and playwrights have examined the impact of colonialism on Irish identity, culture and society, contributing to a deeper understanding of Ireland’s historical and ongoing struggle for autonomy. Among the significant works dealing with these issues are

• J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, which does not explicitly address British colonialism but does reflect the Irish struggle for self-identity under British rule. The play’s treatment of the protagonist’s transformation from timid, oppressed youth to playboy serves as a metaphor for the Irish Catholic desire for independence and self-definition in the face of colonial rule, comments on the romanticization of rebellion and defiance in Irish culture, and treats the creation of heroic myths as a natural response to oppression. The play also critiques the nature of authority, whether paternal or societal, in rural Irish society and the fickleness of moral opinion.
• William Butler Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, a one-act play first performed in 1902, is set in County Mayo during the 1798 Irish Rebellion against British rule and captures the spirit of resistance and the longing for national renewal that characterized the early-20th-century Irish independence movement. Drawing on Ireland’s mythological and folkloric traditions, the play was a call to arms to inspire young men to rise against the colonizers and romanticizes the idea of martyrdom for Ireland, portraying it as a noble, necessary and sacred act. 
• Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, first performed in 1926, is set in a Dublin tenement and follows the lives of ordinary people caught up in the tumultuous events leading up to and following Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising. With characters representing a range of political beliefs and attitudes toward the rebellion, the play exposes the personal tragedies and suffering caused by the nationalist struggle and shows how ordinary people, particularly women and the poor, bore the brunt of the conflict. The play illustrates how British colonial rule exacerbates Irish social divisions and fuels nationalist fervor but also suggests that the fight for national independence overlooks pressing issues of poverty and social inequality. The play’s very title, which refers the Starry Plough flag of the Irish Citizen Army, contrasts the idealistic symbolism with the grim reality faced by those under its banner.
• Friel’s play Translations, first performed in 1980 and set in a rural Irish-speaking community in Baile Beag in 1833, centers on the tensions that arise after British surveyors map the area and anglicize Irish place names—symbolizing the broader cultural erasure imposed by British colonialism. The British seek not just to alter the map but to reshape Irish identity and heritage. The romance between two characters across a linguistic divide symbolizes the possibilities and challenges of cross-cultural communication and the political and personal conflicts faced by those caught between the British and Irish worlds.

In recent years, studies of the construction of whiteness have disputed the arguments advanced a generation ago by authors like Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in Beyond the Melting Pot (1963) and Michael Novak in The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (1971). Those earlier authors regarded the idea of the melting pot, where all ethnic differences blend into a uniform American identity, as a myth and embraced the idea of ethnic pluralism. They claimed that ethnic identities remained distinct and played a crucial role in shaping the social and political landscape.

Whiteness scholars like Noel Ignatiev and David Roediger shifted the focus away from ethnic pluralism to the power dynamics and privileges associated with whiteness. These studies argue that discussions of ethnic identity and assimilation overlook how whiteness operates as a default norm that grants unearned advantages to white people while marginalizing nonwhite groups. Whiteness serves as a form of social capital that provides material and psychological benefits to white people while distancing them from people of color. These scholars also argued that elements of minority cultures have been appropriated by the dominant culture, stripped of their original context and commodified, further entrenching power imbalances.

While the whiteness framework provides valuable insights into the processes of racialization and assimilation, it is essential to recognize and appreciate the rich, unique histories and cultures of European ethnic groups. These groups have distinct identities shaped by their historical experiences and cultural practices that transcend the simplistic narrative of becoming white and cannot be reduced to their racial categorization.

Factors such as religion, language and the historical experiences of migration and discrimination intersect with race to shape the unique identities of these groups. The identity of Irish Catholics in the United States is as much about religion, the historical struggle against British colonialism and Ireland’s vibrant cultural traditions as it is about their eventual assimilation into American whiteness.

As this nation’s ethnic and racial makeup has grown more complex, there has been a tendency to shift attention from earlier European ethnic groups and the novels, memoirs and plays that help document their experience. This shift often overlooks the essential insights that these narratives can provide into the struggle with nativism, discrimination and economic hardship and the challenge of retaining a distinct cultural identity while assimilating into American society.

Neglecting the narratives of earlier European ethnic groups is a big mistake. Those narratives provide crucial historical parallels and insights into the balancing act between cultural preservation and acculturation that contemporary immigrants face. By revisiting and valuing these stories, we can better appreciate how the experiences of contemporary immigrants from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America resemble and diverge from their predecessors’.