Sunday, March 18, 2018

"What Happened to Irish America?"

"As the Irish left the subway tunnels, mills, and nursery wards for the middle and upper middle class, maybe we held hard to the wrong things. Step dancing classes and children's names with complicated Irish spelling, but not the old neighborhoods' practice of shared advancement. Donations to the Irish Studies Departments at prestigious colleges, but not commitment to the on-ramps that did us so much good."

Eileen Markey at The New Republic writes that Irish Americans "seem to have shed what was once a hallmark of Irish identity: a solidarity with the oppressed."

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