Reference no: EM133445227

Assignment:

Roediger argues that the Irish and northern blacks had much in common: the both often lived in slums; they both were often assigned the most physically demanding work; they were both generally poor and vilified as a people; and they were both forced from their homes in search of economic and political freedom. Irish-Americans, on the other hand, came to be some of the fiercest opponents of African-Americans. Northern white opinion of Irish-Americans changed too: from the belief that they were "Low-browed and savage, grovelling and bestial, lazy and wild, simian and sensual" and of a lower "social grade" than enslaved African Americans, the acceptance of the Irish as white workers.

1. How, according to Roediger, what accounts for the Irish-Americans' success in being recognized as "white"?

• What was the role of politics in this?

2. Why did they insist on being "white," especially when that association allied them with the hated British?

• What role did the concept of work play in their insistence?