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I'd like to address this specific portion of the article: "Ignatiev quotes John Finch, an Englishman who travelled the US in 1843, saying: “It is a curious fact

I'd like to address this specific portion of the article: "Ignatiev quotes John Finch, an Englishman who travelled the US in 1843, saying: “It is a curious fact that … the poorer class of Irish immigrants in America, are greater enemies to the Negro population … than any portion of the population in the free States.”" On the surface it might seem that one downtrodden group would instinctively support another one out of solidarity, but in reality a lot of racism has its origins in economic competition. The Irish and African Americans were competing for the same menial and manual jobs in many places, which lead to distrust, anger, fighting, and racism. You could see some of this happening when mining companies would bring in African Americans as scabs during strikes which lead to violent brawls. The Irish weren't fighting a WASP for a job, they were fighting other immigrants or ethnic groups. This same reality continues to this day in many places. Ask someone who works in a field where an undocumented immigrant might compete with them for a job how they feel about it and compare that to someone working at Facebook or Google who isn't worried about the cleaner taking their job as DBA.

mcv 10y ago
I heard about an experiment once where a number of test subjects were ranked from rich to poor, and everybody got some money that they had to give either to the person above them in the ranking, or to the person below them. In most countries, people tend to give the money to the people below them, because they need it more. Only in the US, do people give the money to the person above them. The explanation was that they tend to see the person below them as competition. It seems there's just something about the US that fucks up people's sense of fairness. Maybe the US plays different downtrodden groups off against each other so they fight each other instead of uniting and fighting the people treading down on them.
- fred_is_fred 10y ago
  Oh please. How do you explain lower class voters voting in droves for Brexit? They did not like all the immigrants from the EU coming and taking plumber and cleaner and other manual labor type jobs. This is not just a US issue.
  - mcv 10y ago
    Are you suggesting England is becoming more like the US? Maybe you're right. Though in a sense, this might be the case for all cases where racism is primarily supported by poorer classes: playing different lower class groups off against each other, so they won't rise up against the people keeping them down.

mcv 10y ago

I heard about an experiment once where a number of test subjects were ranked from rich to poor, and everybody got some money that they had to give either to the person above them in the ranking, or to the person below them. In most countries, people tend to give the money to the people below them, because they need it more. Only in the US, do people give the money to the person above them. The explanation was that they tend to see the person below them as competition. It seems there's just something about the US that fucks up people's sense of fairness. Maybe the US plays different downtrodden groups off against each other so they fight each other instead of uniting and fighting the people treading down on them.

fred_is_fred 10y ago
Oh please. How do you explain lower class voters voting in droves for Brexit? They did not like all the immigrants from the EU coming and taking plumber and cleaner and other manual labor type jobs. This is not just a US issue.
- mcv 10y ago
  Are you suggesting England is becoming more like the US? Maybe you're right. Though in a sense, this might be the case for all cases where racism is primarily supported by poorer classes: playing different lower class groups off against each other, so they won't rise up against the people keeping them down.