Irish Americans and Their Identity Crisis

ANGLO AMERICA, 24 Mar 2025

Daniel Horgan - TRANSCEND Media Service

In the 1800’s when the Irish immigrated to the United States in mass, largely due to the potato famine, there were signs in the businesses of many windows that read, “Irish Need Not Apply”.  For Irish families that can recall this through their generational stories, what is written here in this article need not apply.  If you grew up Irish as late as the 1960’s or 70’s in the South End of Boston, or Tipperary Hill in Syracuse New York, or on the Southside of Chicago in Irish neighborhoods such as Bridgeport, what is written here in this article ‘need not apply’ to you.

These families and these places mentioned above have something that all “truly Irish” people still have.  A remembrance and disdain for colonization and how it has shaped their lives and the lives of their ancestors back in the homeland of Érie (Ireland).

But for the millions of people in the United States who call themselves Irish-Americans as they strove to the bar on St. Patrick’s day this past week, it is safe to say that most of them, unknowingly, have an identity crisis.

The objective of this writing is not to admonish this group, of whom I am a part of.  The objective is to point out the so-called success that the UK and US settler-colonial project has had over most Irish-Americans.  The goal of many settler-colonial projects is to bring their new citizens ‘into the fold’ of the “New Nation”, and part of this is to erase their memory.  In the case of Irish-Americans it is the erasure of the British actions against the Irish.  For example most Irish-Americans know the potato famine to be a catastrophic, almost fairy-tale event, of environmental drought and disaster that swept over Ireland.  Although that was part of the story, it wasn’t even close to the full story.  ‘The Irish Potato Famine Didn’t Just Happen”.  As the title of 1995 New York Times Op Ed article points out: “The starvation of Ireland was planned in London.”(-1845)  Indeed, the British Empire was exporting millions of £s of food from Ireland while the Irish population starved, and over a million perished.^[i]

People may ask why is this important?  Beyond the tragic result that we disassociate from our own history and our very selves, the more complex answer is that it enables the settler colonial state of the US to have groups such as Irish-Americans disassociate themselves with domestic and foreign minorities that are suffering from the same tools of colonization.  The most prominent historic and domestic use of this was that the Scotch-Irish were used as paramilitary forces to clear large swaths of Original Native Nations and land, most notably in the South-East.

The most prominent foreign example is Palestine.  It is also a so-called success of a colonial settler nation to erase any connections that the new settlers (such as Irish-Americans) have with  closely associated groups such as the Palestinians. A little known truth that most Irish-Americans are ignorant to is that: “A little over a century ago, Ireland and Palestine were both under British control.  A lot of the brutality of the British Empire practiced in Palestine was practiced on Ireland first.”^[ii]

And why is this dis-association important?  It allows the United States to continue to carry out with Britain its bi-partisan support of Israel in a land stolen from Palestinians reaching as far back as the 1919 British Balfour Declaration, that officially started the current occupation of Palestinian lands.

Previously Lord Balfour had served as British Cabinet secretary for Ireland. He opposed home rule for Ireland, ordered police to open fire on protesters in Mitchelstown, Ireland — killing several people, and earning him the nickname “Bloody Balfour” among the Irish.

The other thing Ireland and Palestine knew in common were the Black and Tans. To most Irish-Americans Black & Tan is a mix of Guiness and Bass.  In fact, however, they were a brutal British police force named for the color of their uniforms, and infamous for killing Irish civilians in the early 20th century. After Irish independence, the Black and Tans deployed to British Mandate Palestine, where they exercised colonial power over the mostly Arab population there.^[iii]

Ronald Storrs, the first British governor of Jerusalem, described the plan for a Jewish homeland in Palestine as “a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.” This which draws a parallel to British colonial policy in Northern Ireland.

Currently today one of the most supportive modern nations for the people in Gaza (and The West Bank) is not an Arab nation, but it is that of the nation of Ireland.

Former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, “ A story of displacement, of dispossession, national identity questioned or denied, forced emigration, discrimination, and now hunger.  This is what Ireland shares with Palestine.”

1n 1980 Ireland was the first European country to officially advocate for Palestinian statehood.  Today the Irish people and government still support in full public view the rights of the people of Palestine.

“Sometimes in all the roads in all the cities of Ireland, I see a Palestinian flag,” Former Palestinian Ambassador to Ireland

In contrast, today we the Irish-Americans of the United States as tax payers fund the continuation of supplication of weapons to Israel. We the United States government continues to allow the blockade of aid to Gaza.  We the United States taxpayers continue to fund, under the cover of events in Gaza, an Israeli military annexation of the West Bank.  This is the so-called power and success that this settler colonial-project can now boast…

“May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

Notes:

^[i]Opinion | Irish Potato Famine Didn’t Just Happen – The New York Times

^[ii] Opinion | Irish Potato Famine Didn’t Just Happen – The New York Times

^[iii] Why Ireland is one of the most pro-Palestinian nations in the world : NPR

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Daniel Horgan is an occasional contributor to Transcend Media Service. People may ask why I support the plight of the Palestinians and I could say that I am the son of my father, the grandson of my grandfather, and the great grandson of my great grandfather. After all: I am Irish.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 24 Mar 2025.

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