At the beginning of the semester, we discussed the concept of the Irish “becoming white” in America. The concept is that Irish people were able to reap the benefits of white Americans by assimilating to American culture. This was made possible by their white skin and ability to blend in, something that African Americans couldn’t do. After reading “Black Irish, Irish Whiteness, and Atlantic State Formation” by David Lloyd, I understood other factors that influence this phenomenon. In the 19th century, Irish people faced discrimination from the British Empire. This had a lot to do with the industrial revolution and the emerging capitalist system in the British Empire. Most of the Irish population at the time were subsistence farmers, which contrasted with the growing urban, industrial system the British Empire needed to grow their empire and economy. Because of this, the Irish were viewed as “peasantry” and were said to have “wildness”, akin to savagery. Irish immigrants in England were said to be “infecting” the working class and were unfit for urban. With Irish immigrants in America, it was a story than in England. The growing industrial economy in America needed people who had no desire to expand westward and would work cheap and relatively low-skill jobs. The Irish fit this bill, which is one of the reasons they were more accepted into society: they supported the capitalist system at the time. In the reading, The Performative Commons and the Aesthetic Atlantic by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Dillon also comments on how capitalism shaped many of the relationships and attitudes towards ethnic groups at the time and how the transatlantic system was built on colonization and capitalism. She notes that your identity in the transatlantic system was often decided by how you fit into the capitalist-colonial system. An example of this is that the Irish were viewed as lesser by the British since they did not support the growing industrial system of the time. Another interesting point is the similarities in how the Irish and African Americans were viewed by their respective oppressors. They were both seen as “unfit” to entire the emerging industrial society as free workers. They were both viewed as a “savage” race of people who would be dangerous if they fully entered society. Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish philosopher, comments that if black people in the Caribbean were set free, it would become a “Black Ireland”.