HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I highly recommend reading How the Irish Became White [0]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics...

⬐ tjs8rj

This is the exact book the myth is based on. Here’s a debunk of the book: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

It’s pretty simple: the book doesn’t mean “white” like white, you know the actual definition of the word. It means “white: having the most rights”, which isn’t the definition at all and is deliberately misleading. It pretends like being white a priori makes one immune from discrimination.

Irish people were always considered white, they were also discriminated against more than anglo-Saxons. Both of these are true. The only reason this would be hard to comprehend is if you have the warped view that American history is just white supremacy (clearly many whites didn’t have it so good).

⬐ soheil

> It means “white: having the most rights”, which isn’t the definition at all and is deliberately misleading

So what is the definition then?

⬐ weakfish

White skin?

⬐ soheil

Please read the book.

⬐ CyberDildonics

You can't expect people to go off and read a book just to prove your point for you.

⬐ soheil

I just don't think this is the right forum to discuss this.

⬐ CyberDildonics

You're already discussing it, maybe you don't want people to reply.

⬐ tjs8rj

The definition of white is that same as that for any other racial group: a member of the white racial group, determined by a combination of lineage, how one is perceived, how one perceives themselves, and more. It can be complicated, and so is usually just determined by a “I know it when I see it” test, or self identification. But certain hard rules like where your ancestry is from and how your parents race is exist.

Not only is it racist, there’s also no sense in tying extra garbage like “level of discrimination” to the definition of white - it just doesn’t match up to observed reality. White people have been enslaved, white people are discriminated against in many countries where they aren’t the majority, white groups receive varying levels of discrimination even now. These facts don’t make a person any more or less white.

American history can be quite convoluted and confusing. This book might help: https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics...

⬐ wallace_f

I do see a valid point to be made about historical racism and how the definitions of who is accepted into the acceptable category (what you call White) has changed over the years. What I don't understand is how White people are also not a race, but a social construct, which literally makes no sense.

⬐ Blackthorn

The history of America, and of whiteness in America, is race. When whiteness has as an entire category changed to exclude undesirables and then include them when they were no longer as undesirable, it's hard to see whiteness as anything but the racist social construct that it has always been historically.

I personally estimate that in 100 years Hispanics are going to be considered white as they lose their undesirable status, just like happened to the Irish.

Well, I'd refer you to this book: https://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics...

You are free to disagree with the thesis, of course.

> I wonder how much it'd shock Eugene if someone pointed it out to him that, in American racial discourse, Irish and Italian folk were once considered "not white."

The title of his piece is almost certainly a reference to "How the Irish Became White" [1], so presumably not so much. I'm with you on the broader point, though, that the hand-wringing about who is and isn't white is silly, and that if it serves as shorthand for racially privileged people, that's pretty much fine.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/....