You are the Dirty Monkey. Who let you in?
Evidently, I collect art. It wasn’t really intentional, and maybe it’s not even art. Specifically, I have a couple of late 19th and early 20th century prints from magazines and newspapers that portray the enemies of the “America First” movement of that time period. Images of an inherently inferior form of human — uncultured, simian in appearance, and almost beast like in nature. My peoples. The Irish in America.
Take a good look at the picture above. A copy of it hangs in my living room. It was drawn by Thomas Nast for Harpers Weekly — a prominent national magazine of the time in 1867. It is an account of an “Irish Riot” as is stated in the lower right hand side. Entitled “The Day We Celebrate,” it depicts monkey faced men with weapons and bottles of liquor hanging from their pockets as they brutally attack the New York City Police Department in the midst of the 1867 St. Patrick’s Day parade. Bloodied and wounded police officers are sprawled on the floor while demonic Irishmen — and even a demonic child in the left hand side of the picture — howl and beat the officers. Is it any wonder the nativist movement of the time screamed “America for Americans!” These creatures — these pagan animals — were thought of as just that: animals. Hide your wife and daughters. Lock your doors. Have a weapon handy. You can’t trust these heathens
I just was given a framed print of the 1889 cover of Puck magazine titled “The mortar of assimilation- and the one element that just won’t mix.” In the great mixing bowl of American citizenship, there is just one race of evil infidels — savage and uncontrollable — that is unfit and unable to to ever be a “good Americans” because of their idolatrous religion, garbled accent, and violent nature: The Irish. The dirty, ignorant, genetically inferior waste from the fringes of Europe that steal American jobs, that create crime and mayhem, that are a drain on our economic system and a danger to our delicate American civilization. America didn’t want them in 1889 and news magazines were free to put that on their covers.
Ah yes, my Irish monkey man. Look at you, unable to assimilate and wash yourself of your evil character. Screaming. Knife wielding. Out of control. No wonder the “true Americans” of the time wanted you out. No wonder the protestant populous feared you. No wonder….
I like and collect prints like this — because they keep me honest about the fact that the same arguments and prejudices that permeate the dominant culture now are the same ones that have always been used against the perpetual flow of “others” into this country. The definition of other in America is one that has changed and shifted over time. The strict WASP definition had to be expanded in the last few decades — and allowances were made for Italians and Irish and other Europeans into the larger fold when the more visual focus on black and brown skin exclusively replaced older nationalistic prejudices and the religious intolerance for Islam replaced fears about Roman Catholicism.
This is not about equating Irish-American suffering or indignities with the issues facing African-Americans today at the hands of police. Nor is it about equating our status as the disposable and mistreated day-laborers of yesterday with the experience of so many undocumented Mexican and Central American workers of today.
For me, it’s a reaction to loss. And it’s about shame.
As I see more and more Irish American last names as Republican and Conservative candidates for office, as I see the Irish Catholic vote swing to Republicans, as I see and hear more Irish Americans in the Tea Party, or supporting Trump’s wall, or angrily denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement, or saying “America for Americans,” I see a people who have forgotten who they are, forgotten where they have come from, and who ape the same despicable beliefs and behaviors that were directed at their not so distant ancestors as they dragged themselves from ships along the docks of Boston and New York, unwelcome and scorned, and struggled to make a new life. Instead of embracing the realities of that past, instead of learning from it and becoming a different kind of American, too many — far too many — have joined the dominant club.
I hang these pictures in my home, and share the stories behind them with whoever will listen, to remind myself that I am the monkey. I am the heathen. I am the non-assimilator. I can never be a “good American.”
I always smile after I say those lines to myself.
