{"id":838,"date":"2023-09-03T20:48:41","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T00:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=838"},"modified":"2023-09-03T20:48:41","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T00:48:41","slug":"wright-on-irish-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2023\/09\/03\/wright-on-irish-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Wright on Irish-America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I found Native Son<\/em> interesting for many reasons, but, particularly, when the text is put in conversation with last week\u2019s reading, the complexity of the construction of Blackness is revealed. For instance, Baldwin reminds us , in On Being White, And Other Lies <\/em>that \u201cno one was white before they came to America,\u201d insisting that proving one’s whiteness through the subjugation of Black Americans is \u201cthe price of the ticket\u201d to being a white American (Baldwin, 178). In Native Son<\/em>, Wright draws attention to the fluidity of racial construction; for instance, Peggy, Dalton\u2019s cook, shares that \u201cmy folks [in Ireland[ feel about England like the colored folks feel about this country\u201d (Wright, 57). While conflating the two experiences can diminish the complexity of each circumstance, Wright helps the reader understand that America\u2019s racial construction doesn\u2019t just fall on lines of Black and white; rather, racial constructions work to uphold the wealthiest white class, while races and\/or nationalities seen as the other continue to work in subservient roles, like Bigger and Peggy. Wright further expands on this by explaining that no one hates Black America more than \u201cpoor whites,\u201d because they gain economic mobility and social validity through their racism (Wright, 23). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first part of the novel, it is very clear that Dalton\u2019s house represents white America: guarded off, wealthy, and – in the literal case of Mrs. Dalton – blinded, further exemplified by Mary\u2019s ignorance of the Black experience. While Peggy is still invited into the home, she can only access Dalton\u2019s wealth through serving them, much like Bigger. However, there is a recognized inequality between Bigger and Peggy – between Black America and white America. Even Peggy\u2019s comment about her hatred of colonization indicates that British colonization while a threat in Ireland, is not a reality faced by Irish Americans, but the threat of white power is a reality faced by Black Americans, like Bigger. Moreover, Peggy\u2019s comments about the \u201clast colored men\u201d who worked for the Daltons prove that Wright draws a distinction between Peggy\u2019s and Bigger\u2019s status. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Irish-American communities, the discrimination faced still rings loudly; yet, as Baldwin almost predicts, discrimination is used to minimize the harsh consequences of racial constructions; Irish-America often points to their own discrimination as evidence that Black Americans cannot \u2018rise above \u2019 their status. In reality, as Wright notes, Irish-Americans and Black Americans exist shunned from the upper class but different in their experience of race. Mary and Jan\u2019s visit to the South Side indicates that Bigger\u2019s experience is not just different but seemingly alien from that of White America. While Peggy appears for a mere four pages, Wright draws a sharp distinction between Black America and Irish-America, which would have been relevant as waves of Irish immigrants and Black migrants settled in Chicago in the early 20th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found Native Son interesting for many reasons, but, particularly, when the text is put in conversation with last week\u2019s reading, the complexity of the construction of Blackness is revealed. For instance, Baldwin reminds us , in On Being White, And Other Lies that \u201cno one was white before they came to America,\u201d insisting that … Continue reading Wright on Irish-America<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4686,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[471414],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":839,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}