24 Mar How, according to Roediger, what accounts for the Irish-Americans’ success in being recognized as “white”?
Order Instructions
Roediger argues that the Irish and northern blacks had much in common: the both often lived in slums; they both were often assigned the most physically demanding work; they were both generally poor and vilified as a people; and they were both forced from their homes in search of economic and political freedom. Irish-Americans, on the other hand, came to be some of the fiercest opponents of African-Americans. Northern white opinion of Irish-Americans changed too: from the belief that they were “Low-browed and savage, grovelling and bestial, lazy and wild, simian and sensual” and of a lower “social grade” than enslaved African Americans, the acceptance of the Irish as white workers.
Follow the instructions to complete this assignment:
Write a 500-word essay that describes the transformation among free labor in the American North described in the text above. Answer the following questions:
How, according to Roediger, what accounts for the Irish-Americans’ success in being recognized as “white”?
What was the role of politics in this?
Why did they insist on being “white,” especially when that association allied them with the hated British?
What role did the concept of work play in their insistence?
