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How the Irish became white
Very famous book about how Irish were slowly assimilated into anglo society. From being treated like depigmented niggers to being treated as fellow white man.
This is not so much to negate what was said in the thread (not much was really said at all), but rather go on a small tangent of my own about this subject as it sparked my interest in writing my own thread on this. I want to say to say first that I do not believe it is wrong to say that the Irish were looked down upon as "lesser" whites by the English and Americans but I think a factor that plays into this that is heavily understated by most people is religion rather than looks alone.
While it's true that there are some Irishmen with darker complexions (the "Black Irish"), they are still a minority of the population who mostly live in the outer edges of western Ireland (the same could be applied to the highlands in Scotland, northern Wales, and to a lesser extent the west country of England especially Cornwall). But even in these areas the majority of the population still looks pretty much identical to the majority.
By the way I also believe it's noteworthy to mention that there has been a myth that these people are somehow of "non-British" origin somehow, the most popular of all stating that they were the descendants of the Spanish Armada who had settled in Britain. The reality is that this look probably comes from Anatolian Farmer DNA which is present in all European populations, however the amount varies from region to region. The percentage of Anatolian Farmer DNA in these regions, however, is heavily exaggerated by Nordicist thinkers:
Now moving back to my main point. I believe that the main reason that the Irish were discriminated against in early America was not so much as of an actual perceived racial differences between them and the rest of the population (at least not for the most part), but rather their religion. A lot of people seem to forget just how big of a part religion really played in daily life back then. While true that some of the founding fathers were secularists (and even them of them were Christian aside from a few notable figures) and the government is a secular one, the vast majority of the population were Christians and quite devoutly so, one might even call them extremists. Religion was a major source of conflict throughout American history and at some point Catholics were even banned from entering certain colonies or practicing their faith within them. Even inter-denominational conflict was commonplace amongst mainline versus evangelical Protestant sects.
But amongst the Irish who were Protestants they usually integrated pretty much seamlessly into the greater majority even if the atttidue toward them was still somewhat negative or at least cautious by some. And this could really be applied to any other group that had a mixed Catholic and Protestant population in northwestern Europe (the French, the Germans, the Swiss, etc.)
Of course stereotypes were still placed upon them but Anglos looked down upon really every group. An Englishman from London would look down upon an English from Burnley, and an American from Massachusetts would look down upon an American from Georgia (and probably vice versa). In the end, we are not so different.
TL;DR: Discrimination against the Irish was not so much because they looked different than the Anglos but moreso as a result of religious differences. The amount of truly swarthy Irish is rather slim despite what some may think.
@Jason Voorhees @Saint Casanova @6ft4