Why were the Irish being discriminated?

Answer 1

The Irish were discriminated against because, during famine times, there was no food. The Irish fled Ireland in search of jobs and food. There became so many Irish that no one would employ them and the became looked down upon.

Answer 2

The Irish first started arriving in the U.S. in large numbers in the late 1840s. Earlier Irish immigrants had been predominantly Protestants; the millions (literally) who arrived in the 1840s and the next few decades were the first predominantly Catholic immigrant group to arrive in large numbers.

Significant discrimination against the Irish continued until the 1960s; the fact that John Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for President in 1960, was Irish Catholic concerned many voters, who feared he would be more loyal to the Pope than to the United States. Kennedy, with his style and charm, overcame a lot of the prejudice against all Irish Catholics.

For the first several decades, most Irish men could find jobs only as laborers no matter what abilities they had, and some people refused to hire them even for the most menial labor jobs. They were stereotyped as drunks. The freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution was interpreted by many as freedom of religion as long as it was one of the Protestant sects. Although the Protestant Bible was usually not explicitly taught in public schools, textbooks and lessons were flavored with the Protestant religion. Catholics felt they had to establish their own private school system, from grammar school to college. This led to further isolation them from the mainstream of Americans.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Irish had established themselves in their own business, and were lawyers and doctors - usually just for other Irish, however. There were Irish millionaires, but they had had to form their own businesses. As late as the 1970s in New York City, probably one of the more liberal cities in the United States, the most elite law firms hired almost entirely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males, and the Irish formed their own law firms or banded with other groups who were discriminated against.

(For the information of any reader, I am not Irish and have no tied to them in any way.)

Answer 3

Because they were different. They were the first of the 'new immigrants' to America in the early to mid 19th century. They were Catholic coming into a mainly Protestant population. They were penniless, and had nothing but the shirts on their backs, in most cases. The famine Irish brought disease with them. They settled in low income neighbourhoods which soon became over crowded. These slums became notorious for every vise know to man.

They worked the low income jobs. They had strange accents, some didn't even speak English. Their dress sense, at the time, was 20-30 years behind when they arrived. They were clannish and stuck to their own, initially, cause they could not afford uptown rents.

They quickly got a reputation as drunks, criminals and fighters; these stereotypes still remain today.

Answer 4

The Irish worked for lesser pay than the whites. The businesses/employees employed the Irish instead of the whites, and so the whites felt that the Irish were stealing their jobs.

Answer 5

The Irish, being neutral were not subject (as a rule) to any discrimination by the Nazis.

Answer 6

Irish are farmers