Thread by @aetherlev

Okay, I want to talk a bit about the Irish immigrant experience in relation to #AmericanDirt

Mostly because this shit makes me unreasonably angry. Here’s a thread.

https://twitter.com/reading_while/status/1219718595913175040

First, context: I am an Irish immigrant to Canada.

My sister is an immigrant in Minneapolis.

My brother-in-law, various friends: Sydney.

My sister-in-law: Bristol.

My father’s cousins: Boston.

Other friends and acquaintances from college: Germany, Norway, Scotland.

Ireland is a nation with a culture of emigration to the rest of the world. We are constantly moving back and forth, going out to join the diaspora, returning with our experiences.

Irish citizenship can be claimed if one of your grandparents was Irish. People go, their children return.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch the history of Irish emigration going back centuries. People come looking for their roots, their ancestors.

For a small, insignificant country on the edge of Europe, we are connected to so many places abroad.

The Irish experience of emigration is unique, wrapped up in history and family and culture and legacy.

Modern day: Irish immigrants to the US have an easy time of it. The visa waiver program means they can just wander in for six months, no questions asked, as long as they don’t work.

Other benefits: read as white American on sight, until we speak and the accent comes out.

Which isn’t even a guarantee we’ll be IDed as foreign-bad, because the gift of the gab isn’t just a stereotype. Irish people are good at talking and being friendly.

There is a lot of leeway granted to us because we’re native English speakers who the Americans didn’t fight during the War of Independence. We get a lot of sympathy. It’s assumed we’re there legitimately.

Add to that: the J1 student program. It’s normalized in the US that young Irish people will show up, work for a while, then go home.

Plus, we’re from a western country that’s assumed to be like the US because (a) white, and (b) English.

So in summary: the modern Irish experience of immigration is hilariously fucking easy. We have SO many options, beyond how trivial it is for us to just wander off somewhere within the EU.

Side note: the fact that Irish people learn Irish from the moment we enter school? Leads to a massive boost when learning other languages and huge cultural approval of such.

Like, there is a reason that a lot of international companies put their call centres in Ireland, and it’s not just for the tax breaks. There’s a disproportionate number of Irish people fluent in various European languages.

Anyway: it means we can and do immigrate just about anywhere and we have no fear of learning new languages.

A friend’s wife lived in Japan, learned Japanese. Another friend of a friend is out there right now, teaching English.

My dad went to Israel when he was young, worked on a kibbutz. (And got shot, but that’s another story.) Another friend went travelling around the Middle East, picked up some Arabic.

We’re in this strange place of being white and speaking English, but we’re... not enemies to anyone. We never oppressed anyone. We travel, we’re everyone’s friend, and we’re happy to speak the lingo and try new things. We’re KNOWN for it.

So my point, in a really long, roundabout way, is that being Irish is about the best possible thing to be if you’re an immigrant. You’ve got every possible advantage short of actually being a legal resident.

So what does this have to do with American Dirt and Jeanine Cummins?

There is this thing, right, where Americans use the fact that the Irish were oppressed against people of colour. Irish slavery and all that shit.

It makes me UNREASONABLY angry. Because that is MY culture, MY history, MY ancestors that you are brazenly taking and using to prop up your gross fucking racism.

How DARE you.

There’s more I could say about this but most of it would be swearing.

This thing about Cummins that she and her publisher and the white press are pretending makes her #ownvoices, just because her husband is Irish and was undocumented: it’s the same thing.

The weaponization of a unique Irish experience against people of colour.

And... okay. I should be more angry because of all the gross racism, because that is a far bigger deal. But this thing is personal. Deeply personal. Because of who and what I am.

I’ve stood on the other side of the world from my home and sung songs written centuries before I was born, and heard the voices of all the children of Ireland who could never return.

You don’t know the depths of my hatred for someone who would defile that.

This has gotten kinda long and I don’t even know if I’m explaining it too well but I need coffee right now. Fuck everything.

/rant