No Irish Need Apply Myth Resurfaces—In Dublin
10/17/2013
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Mark Krikorian on Twitter:

The "No Irish Need Apply" thing is an urban legend. There were never any such signs. [See "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization,  by Richard Jensen, Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429]. Northern employers in the 19th century were as enthusiastic about cheap labor as their modern equivalents.

The New York Times is talking about something different. The "Irish" who needn't apply in this case aren't actually Irish at all.

Ireland was monoracial and bicultural until quite recently. Now, thanks to immigration, it's multiracial. (Pictured right, Samantha Mumba, a Zambian-Irish actress.)

This has led to interracial violence, and displacement of the native Irish by immigrants.

Last year, Dublin taxi drivers were caught putting green lights on top of their cabs, and stickers on their bumpers, to surreptitiously inform prospective customers of their Irish origins — as opposed to the increasing number of foreign-born Irish drivers. Media attention eventually spurred the country’s transportation minister, Leo Varadkar, [a Fine Gael politician whose father was an Indian doctor] to call for their immediate removal, declaring the drivers’ actions to be “inherently racist” and “xenophobic.”

The New York Times feels that since some of these people were born and brought up in Ireland, they should be considered just as Irish as the natives who have lived there for more than 2, 000 years.

But this is Ireland we're talking about, where 500 years didn't make the Ulstermen really Irish, any more than a thousand years made the Anglo-Norman rulers Irish.

When they finally got rid of direct British rule, the actual Irish adopted the anthem "A Nation Once Again."

Now no nations need apply.

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