Ah Troll
-
mrh1000-1 — 18 years ago(March 02, 2008 12:42 PM)
What utter rubbish, modern Ireland is an extremely wealthy country with one of the highest GDP Rates in the World and it also has one of the highest rates of millionaires per capita in Europe.
Many English people are of Irish extraction, as are Scottish and Welsh.
Americans seem to think Ireland is some great distance away from the British mainland, it's not, it's a short plane ride, and many British people visit Ireland. The North Channel strait, of the Irish Sea is only 13 miles (21 km) across at its narrowest point between mainland Great Britain and Ireland.
In 2001, there were 674,786 people in England (1.4 per cent of the population) who had been born in Ireland. This is the greatest concentration of Irish-born - as distinct from persons of Irish ancestry - abroad anywhere in the world, and equivalent to 12.1% of the population of the island of Ireland (5.6 million) in 2001.
In 2001, around 55,000 people in Scotland (1.1 per cent of the Scottish population) had been born in Ireland, while people of Irish (either Protestant or Catholic) heritage make up 20% of the Scottish population. Scotland has a greater number of persons born in Northern Ireland (0.66 per cent) than in the Republic of Ireland (0.43%).
Starting in the 4th century, Irish raiders settled Wales extensively, their impact being so great that many Gaelic words were introduced into the Welsh language. In 2001 there were 20,569 people in Wales (0.7% of the population) who had been born in Ireland. St Patrick (Patron Saint of Ireland) is believed to have been Welsh, and became a missionary converting the people of Ireland to
the christian faith.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Briton
An even greater percentage of English, Irish and Welsh have Irish Ancestory, but we don't tend to go on about it like the tenth generation American 'plastic paddys' who come out every St Patricks day for the craic.
Another preconception Americans have is that most Irish people support the paramilitaries, this is not true at all, many hate them and are horrified by the violence. Sadly both the Loyalist and Republican the paramilitaries have now become increasingly involved in organised crime.
It's also laughable that Hollywood potray the English as toffs with upper class accents. Whilst the vast majority of English people are working class and have string regional accents, often just as distinct as the Irish accents. -
albertflasher — 17 years ago(April 10, 2008 01:14 PM)
Oh give me a break. Comparing the white Irish to black Americans is ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that Irish are known to be INCREDIBLY RACIST towards black people. During the Civil War, the Archbishop of New York, Irishman John Hughes, was very pro-slavery. And don't forget the horrible Draft Riots, in which mobs of Irish scum TORTURED, CASTRATED and LYNCHED black men, and also killed women and children. A "colored orphanage" was burnt and were it not for the kindness of passersby, scores of children would have been killed. After the war, "Tammany Hall," the name for the New York political organization controlled by largely Irish politicians, was known for their animus toward black people. Flash forward to the seventies, and there's the race riots in "Southie" (South Boston) in the 1970's over busing that made headlines all over the world. The list goes on and on.
I'm a person of color and I wouldn't visit Ireland if you paid me, because from what I understand dark-skinned immigrants to Ireland (especially Northern Ireland) face a very hard time, too. Now why am I not surprised? -
Sheriff_Of_Nottingham — 15 years ago(July 05, 2010 09:02 PM)
The reason the English conquered the Irish during the medieval period was because the Irish were raiding England's western coast and butchering English subjects. And there were famines in Ireland long before the British.
-
Krauser-san — 15 years ago(August 07, 2010 10:04 AM)
^lol, did you read that on the back of a John Bull cereal box?
It took Britain centuries to fully conquer Ireland. The Gaels were long past raiding English coasts when Cromwell came over to reconquer the lands form Irish Confederates and killed nearly have the civilian population. -
EibhlinnSavage — 15 years ago(December 21, 2010 02:50 AM)
Anyone who has done Postcolonial Studies in Ireland knows that the Irish are considered to be the only occidental postcolonial country. It's a little bit more complicated and subtle than simply being the blacks of Europe. But yeah, you've got the gist of it. The Irish were colonized, enslaved, murdered and treated as an inferior race by the British. The marks on the culture and the national psyche are very similar to that of other countries that have been colonized. One notable difference though is that the Irish have thrived as a country (at least in the South, Northern Ireland is a whole other story) since then, whereas most other postcolonial nations are still struggling with the aftermath of colonialism.
Eibhlinn Savage
[insert movie quote] -
intofilm — 11 years ago(April 09, 2014 03:17 PM)
That comes up in the movie "The Commitments" too, although it's done in a humorous way.
Jimmy Rabbitte: Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud.
