My daddy is Irish. I know I focus a lot more on my Mexican side and it is mostly, I think because it is more recent. I’ve never been to Ireland. I know a lot less about Irish culture than I do about Mexican culture. In fact my Irish upbringing is some watered down Irish-Americanism. It is my dad hanging up a picture of RFK and JFK next to our Aztec calendar. It is my father getting tipsy while watching soccer games and singing Irish folk songs. It is my Irish-American grandfather making sure I went to “good” Irish Catholic mass. It is my uncle Kevin, telling my mom to make sure us kids never married English.
My Irish side is stereotypically Irish-American along with me having a disdain for those colonizing English.
My Mexican side is much more ubiquitous because I grew up with it. I lived in Mexico, went to school in Mexico, visit it frequently, still have friends and close family there. My Mexican mother became a citizen only a couple years ago, while my Irish-American father has had family here in Ohio for generations.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this because yesterday at the rally someone from the Irish Lobby For Immigration Reform spoke and mentioned 50,000 undocumented Irish in the United States. I think that is something many of us forget is that there are many undocumented people here, not just from Mexico, not just from Latin America, but from all over the world.
I think the Irish-Mexican combination makes a lot of sense particularly in terms of Catholicism and immigration.
Reminds me of a quote from Bernadette Devlin McAliskey an Irish civil rights leader:
I was not very long there until, like water, I found my own level. ‘My people’ the people who know about oppression, discrimination, prejudice, poverty and the frustration and despair that they produce were not Irish Americans. They were black, Puerto Rican, Chicano. And those who were supposed to be ‘my people’, the Irish Americans who know about English misrule and the Famine and supported the civil-rights movement at home, and knew that Partition and England were the cause of the problem, looked and sounded to me like Orangemen. They said exactly the same things about blacks that the loyalists said about us at home. In New York, I was given the key to the city by the mayor, an honour not to be sneezed at. I gave it to the Black Panthers.
Irish? I thought you were… some *other* northern European heritage of which you disdain.
That is so awesome!! It reminds me of an article I read last night in the New Yorker about young Iranian dissidents, one of whom identifies very strongly with hip-hop culture in the U.S. He says 50 cent and Eminem have so much to say about the Iranian political situation, oppression, underdogness etc.
“It is my dad hanging up a picture of RFK and JFK next to our Aztec calendar.”
Chica does this mean we’re all a little Irish? Somewhere there’s a beautiful portrait of JFK that my great-grandma had in her home. And I know many other family members who also have the Kennedy pics up. Of course, next to the Pope, but we have an Aztec calendar! heehee
There’s actually a rider on the bill that makes it unapplicable to Irish undocs. there was an article about it in the NY Times a couple weeks ago.