Just watched Sinners

Can anyone enlighten me on why they picked on Irish immigrants? Did blues get coopted by Irish historically?

I don’t get it

  • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    9 days ago

    I haven’t seen the movie, but the Irish were viewed pretty poorly throughout American history, so that might be something that was played up in the movie. Again, I haven’t seen it, though, so I don’t know for sure.

      • Bravo@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        Yes, it WAS fucked up. That’s how it was back in those days.

        An illustration from the H. Strickland Constable's Ireland from One or Two Neglected Points of View shows an alleged similarity between "Irish Iberian" and "Negro" features in contrast to the higher "Anglo-Teutonic." The accompanying caption reads "The Iberians are believed to have been originally an African race, who thousands of years ago spread themselves through Spain over Western Europe. Their remains are found in the barrows, or burying places, in sundry parts of these countries. The skulls are of low prognathous type. They came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and descendants of savages of the Stone Age, who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been out-competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way, according to the laws of nature, for superior races."

        There was all kinds of stupid racism back in those days, and “science” (but actually pseudoscience) was used as an excuse for it, like Calvin Candie in Django Unchained going on about skull dimples.

        Well, I say “back in those days” but really it’s alive and well in the present, too. Have you ever read what modern racists believe? It’s still nuts.