Saw a TikTok today showing the current FASFA asking what specific flavor of white someone was. There was a comment asking about how the classifications were decided on. This comes up a fair amount when people see EEO classifications for the first time because races like Arab and Jewish are considered white in the EEO system despite geography. I do things that are HR adjacent, so I see this question a lot.
So here is where I experienced a surprise racism speed run. I said the following, "If a person, whose family had lived in Ireland for at least a hundred years, were to come to America, they would be called African American if their skin color was in that shade range." Notice I never indicated what the person's race could have been until the end. This was my mistake.
So I had some jack wagon come in and start raging about how Irish people have never been called African American and no Irish person had ever been prevented from marrying a white woman. That I was delusional. No Irish person had ever been discriminated against in the US. Oh and I was fear mongering.
Well first of all good sir, there is no law that says people from Ireland can only be white. Now I put it that way in my comment too, People from Ireland. Because I understand there is a difference between ethnic background and geographic background, and I wanted to be clear that I was referring specifically to people who lived on the island of Ireland not people of Irish ethnic descent.
I like precision in language almost as much as I like over explaining myself to the void of the internet.
Second of all, my good man. My fine gentleman that went to extensive trouble to tell me all about his passport and how he was Irish because his grandparents immigrated from Ireland before his father was born, and how his grandparents lived in Ireland and never saw a black person. My dude, I have been all over the place in the US. Including in the various cities members of the English Royal Family have been, at the same time. I have never once seen them in person nor has anyone I know, but I know they have been here and have even lived here on occasion. Because I understand the concept that just because I or someone I know have not experienced something, doesn't mean it isn't true. I understand the concept that other people have different experiences than I have, and sometimes they get to experience things I never will.
Third, save the best (worst) for last. Or at least the most important. Like my dude, do you have any idea this shit the Irish have had to deal with not only in the US but in Ireland? The complete and absolute horrors. Prima nocta, the potato famine, enslavement to the English, the list goes on. Like if there is any group of white folks that can understand as a people the torment any minority group has experienced at the hands of other white folks, it's the Irish. The population of Ireland still has not recovered from the potato famine, which honestly is a horrible name for the English genocide of the Irish. The Irish still don't have full control over their whole island and the parts they do control are still overseen by the English. Of all the groups to say have never experienced ethnic hatred,
Jesus H Christ, on a bike, and oh yeah Mary is right on those handlebars.
Also, just for fun, I am also ethnically from a white factory country. In my country, if you were useful, skin color didn't matter because everyone needed to pitch in to survive the winter. But the English took that from my country too. Just not in as horrific a manner as they did the Irish.
