Is cotton offensive to black people?

[gpw]

Dec 15, 2014 19:11:24 GMT -5 Nugget T. Brain, The OG said:

I am just sad I'm too frantic from work to properly dredge up some full caps lock dramatics.

Losing my touch, y'all.

Caps lock is one of my favorite things about you! 

[gpw]

Good lord this isn't going to stop, is it?

All I have to add at this point is that I may or may not have gone to a store in clothes that I'd slept in. I am also currently eating mashed potatoes. I am not Irish, but my H is. Ha.

[irishbride2]

I'm pretty certain of the fact that I can walk down the street of a middle to upper class neighborhood in jeans and a hoodie and not be automatically assumed to be a criminal.


I also like potatoes.



That's all I have to add. Elitist irish woman checking in.

[sandsonik]

Dec 15, 2014 20:46:06 GMT -5 ttt said:

Dec 15, 2014 20:08:08 GMT -5 sandsonik said:

I never thought the claim was that people preferred hiring black folks to Irish folk.  Just that they didn't want either.  It's not a myth, the newspaper ads and signs still exist.

Have you ever seen that PBS thing about how the fire fighters started?  They were basically competing gangs!  They started out as private companies competing for the same turf and often creating their own business, wink wink,  and disabling the other company's equipment or using any dirty trick available to score the job.

I can't remember why Irish cops are so predominant.   I think it had something to do with getting on the force when  so many people were fighting the civil war.  LoL, I just googled 'reason why so many cops are I...." and google autofilled "idiots" before I could type Irish.

The signs never existed www.irishcentral.com/roots/no-such-thing-as-no-irish-need-apply-signs-argues-history-professor-211727201-237597051.html

Oh, it's been exaggerated no doubt.  But no one said the signs NEVER existed.    Check out this link for some, and go halfway down to the Fitchburg Sentinel - which admits it was a common enough sight in their ads.  yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/where-no-irish-need-apply/

[irishbride2]

I wish I wasn't on my phone. I have so much to say. We have now enterd my nerd wheel house: the history of race and labor in America. I could totally go full on obnoxious condescension.

Luckily I am confident this thread will still be going tomorrow.

[Velar Fricative]

I'm just gonna act white and say "I just can't even" (because really, I can't) and go to bed.

[gpw]

I  (heart) swearing @smorriso.

[pixy0stix]

Someone must have slipped something into her Metamucil.

[iammalcolmx]

Dec 15, 2014 22:23:04 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Someone must have slipped something into her Metamucil.

Imma join you in the corner. I howled so loud I woke up my dog, she is currently throwing me shade.

[NewOrleans]

Dec 15, 2014 22:23:04 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Someone must have slipped something into her Metamucil.

[NitaX]

Dec 15, 2014 20:29:51 GMT -5 flgirl said:

Dec 15, 2014 18:09:59 GMT -5 teflepi said:

No. The IRISH were not systematically killed. So, nope. Stop. STOP whitey

And there is the problem. The thought that one group suffered more or less then another group. I don't think blacks have the only claim to that. So I guess 1 million dead and 1 million emigrants from the potato famine just don't make the cut. Every ethnic, racial, religious group can be offended by something and we should understand and empathize.  At least I do.

See, if you had taken the time to - I don't know read some of the dialogue, you would have found that I pointed out how every minority in this nation had been treated INCLUDING white immigrants. But no, instead, you missed all of that and want to come out of the shadows and ignore the pages of other posts where there was discourse.

I just can't with this mess. I, for the life of me, cannot understand why it's really just black folks who are forever told to ignore the things that happened to them. And not just "Oh Slavery," but Redlining, False Imprisonment, Lynching, Segregation, YEARS of it. Not just four years here and there but from 1619 until clean up until 1970 give or take a few years, America's schools were segregated. 

Then we have redlining in the 1960s - 1980s that defined housing policy. AND - that Wells Fargo case recently? That was all about predatory lending practices where black folk with the SAME LOAN QUALIFICATIONS were given worse loans than their white counterparts.

I'm TIRED of having these discussions like black folk make this up for shits and giggles. If you're going to sit around here with some righteous fucking indignation about how EVERY BODY ELSE BEEN DONE WRONG BLACK FOLKS SHUT UP, you can kiss my entire black ass.

And I meant that shit and before I take it back, I'll add more to it.

[NitaX]

Dec 15, 2014 22:02:52 GMT -5 irishbride2 said:

I'm pretty certain of the fact that I can walk down the street of a middle to upper class neighborhood in jeans and a hoodie and not be automatically assumed to be a criminal.


I also like potatoes.



That's all I have to add. Elitist irish woman checking in.

You still alive to tell about it. I mean Trayvon isn't.

[ttt]

Dec 15, 2014 22:06:47 GMT -5 sandsonik said:

Dec 15, 2014 20:46:06 GMT -5 ttt said:

The signs never existed www.irishcentral.com/roots/no-such-thing-as-no-irish-need-apply-signs-argues-history-professor-211727201-237597051.html

Oh, it's been exaggerated no doubt.  But no one said the signs NEVER existed.    Check out this link for some, and go halfway down to the Fitchburg Sentinel - which admits it was a common enough sight in their ads.  yesteryearsnews.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/where-no-irish-need-apply/

The majority of the examples in that link are stories or songs.  

From the article I posted: 

The business literature, both published and unpublished, never mentions NINA or any policy remotely like it. The newspapers and magazines are silent. The courts are silent. There is no record of an angry youth tossing a brick through the window that held such a sign. Have we not discovered all of the signs of an urban legend?

The NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after the 1798 Irish rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it was used by English to indicate their distrust of the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant. For example the Anglican bishop of London used the phrase to say he did not want any Irish Anglican ministers in his diocese. By the 1820s it was a cliché in upper and upper middle class London that some fussy housewives refused to hire Irish and had even posted NINA signs in their windows. It is possible that handwritten NINA signs regarding maids did appear in a few American windows, though no one ever reported one.

We DO have actual newspaper want ads for women workers that specifies Irish are not wanted; they will be discussed below. In the entire file of the New York Times from 1851 to 1923, there are two NINA ads for men, one of which is for a teenager.

Computer searches of classified help wanted ads in the daily editions of other online newspapers before 1923 such as the Booklyn Eagle, the Washington Post and theChicago Tribune show that NINA ads for men were extremely rare--fewer than two per decade.

The complete absence of evidence suggests that probably zero such signs were seen at commercial establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor recruiters etc. anywhere in America, at any time. NINA signs and newspaper ads for apartments to let did exist in England and Northern Ireland, but historians have not discovered reports of any in the United States, Canada or Australia. The myth focuses on public NINA signs which deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants. The overwhelming evidence is that such signs never existed.

[Deleted]

Dec 15, 2014 20:08:08 GMT -5 sandsonik said:

Dec 15, 2014 15:30:29 GMT -5 @helenabonhamcarter said:

LOL Nah, I heard this too, that they couldn't find proof that people preferred hiring black folks to Irish ones.

But there is a reason why cops and firefighters have a heavy Irish presence. And sometimes I wonder if that particular tension isn't one of the undercurrents present in LEO today.

How is that for full circle?

I never thought the claim was that people preferred hiring black folks to Irish folk.  Just that they didn't want either.  It's not a myth, the newspaper ads and signs still 

I thought I'd read somewhere that they actually couldn't find those ads, or at least not nearly enough to back up the claim that it was prevalent or that they were reluctant to hire the Irish in particular and not just a bias against fresh immigrants of any sort.

[NewOrleans]

Dec 15, 2014 22:48:06 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

This thread makes me sad. And tired. We have so much work to do with race relations in this country.

People heard the message in here.  Revisit the first few pages.  People heard.  

[aurora]

Dec 15, 2014 22:48:06 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

This thread makes me sad. And tired. We have so much work to do with race relations in this country.

Yes.

[Deleted]

Dec 15, 2014 20:42:42 GMT -5 elleblue said:

When multiple Irish people explain to me how a display of potatoes in a store or other public space is offensive because of their history, I will listen and not argue and (hopefully) empathize. But I just don't see that happening because it's not an apt comparison. Maybe if Harrods department store had barrels of rotten potatoes and gleaming sheaves of wheat as decor in their store, it would make sense for Irish people to feel some kind of way about it. But otherwise? Not the same. 

I do need the Northern Irish to stop doing this shit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_walk

[Deleted]

Do you know how you can tell that being black has no comparison to being Irish in this country?

Because no one is really all that insulted that there's a St Patrick's day. People gleefully put on their green, stuff their face with corned beef, drink green beer until they turn green and generally whoop it up.

But why is there black history month, guys? Why can't there be a white history month? If there was a white history month, people would be mad.

[sandsonik]

Dec 15, 2014 22:59:25 GMT -5 @helenabonhamcarter said:

I do need the Northern Irish to stop doing this shit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_walk

Totally agree.

[cville]

"Old people and snaps" would be a good name for a band. More likely a polka band than a punk one, but still.

[gottadobe]

Dec 15, 2014 23:01:18 GMT -5 @majorwife said:

Dec 15, 2014 22:59:15 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

No cotton boll is right.

i know now. i was showing my uneducated roots

Boll is when it's still in the plant though, right?

And, ball is what we buy?

Or....?

[SallyJ]

Dec 15, 2014 20:29:51 GMT -5 flgirl said:

Dec 15, 2014 18:09:59 GMT -5 teflepi said:

No. The IRISH were not systematically killed. So, nope. Stop. STOP whitey

And there is the problem. The thought that one group suffered more or less then another group. I don't think blacks have the only claim to that. So I guess 1 million dead and 1 million emigrants from the potato famine just don't make the cut. Every ethnic, racial, religious group can be offended by something and we should understand and empathize.  At least I do.

Black PEOPLE.  THEY ARE PEOPLE. LIKE YOU.  LIKE ME.  PEOPLE.

 PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.PEOPLE.

[teengirlsquad]

Wait - so it's cotton boll not cotton ball?! I'm so confused.

[Deleted]

Dec 15, 2014 23:24:18 GMT -5 teengirlsquad said:

Wait - so it's cotton boll not cotton ball?! I'm so confused.

The thingie on the actual stalk is a boll. That's why you have boll weevils.


The stuff in the bag at your house is a cotton ball . . . unless you're a racist then




 

[teengirlsquad]

I actually didn't know and I can't keep up with this post. I'm trying. And failing.

[SallyJ]

Dec 15, 2014 22:48:06 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

This thread makes me sad. And tired. We have so much work to do with race relations in this country.

I just want you to know that you (and many others) are helping many people understand.  As a result, you are creating many vocal, intelligent allies.  I've learned a ton here on race relations and my inner circle (of mostly white people) are listening and asking questions which is sparking more and more meaningful dialogue.

This really stuck out to me in the link NewOrleans posted:

a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.

[teflepi]

Dec 15, 2014 20:29:51 GMT -5 flgirl said:

Dec 15, 2014 18:09:59 GMT -5 teflepi said:

No. The IRISH were not systematically killed. So, nope. Stop. STOP whitey

And there is the problem. The thought that one group suffered more or less then another group. I don't think blacks have the only claim to that. So I guess 1 million dead and 1 million emigrants from the potato famine just don't make the cut. Every ethnic, racial, religious group can be offended by something and we should understand and empathize.  At least I do.

1. There is no suffering Olympics.  No one said this.  

2. And you have to be kidding me with your with your white privilege if you think the blight from famine was the same as the tearing apart of families, raping of women and children, murder, lynching and on and on is the same.  

3. Congratulations on your privilege?

4. 

[NewOrleans]

Dec 15, 2014 23:31:26 GMT -5 teengirlsquad said:

I actually didn't know and I can't keep up with this post. I'm trying. And failing.

Eh, I was calling them cotton balls.  Out of all the shit posted in here, this is the least ignorant, lol.  Not to worry.

toledo, spokoino.  Don't skeer our lurkers. We even have @soudesafinado speaking in motherly tones to coax them out. (Then we will capture them and put them in our groupthink bag which is made of non-Uzbek cotton).

[emilyj]

Dec 15, 2014 22:48:06 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

This thread makes me sad. And tired. We have so much work to do with race relations in this country.

But these threads, including this one, have had a lot of benefit for a lot of people.

I used some examples from past threads earlier this semester during my section on race in my undergrad class. It opened up several great discussions. I just hope they all remember them going forward.

[NewOrleans]

Dec 15, 2014 23:33:34 GMT -5 SallyJ said:

Dec 15, 2014 22:48:06 GMT -5 @soudesafinado said:

This thread makes me sad. And tired. We have so much work to do with race relations in this country.

I just want you to know that you (and many others) are helping many people understand.  As a result, you are creating many vocal, intelligent allies.  I've learned a ton here on race relations and my inner circle (of mostly white people) are listening and asking questions which is sparking more and more meaningful dialogue.

This really stuck out to me in the link NewOrleans posted:

a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.

You read it.   (wilted)