Being Irish American shapes my commitment to international labor solidarity

Irish Americans are descendants of an oppressed people, people once excluded from the category of “whiteness.” Now, we are beneficiaries of that same white-constructed society. This transfer of racial identity wasn’t an organic process; it was conscious.

Once, there were signs across the west bearing the phrase, “No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish.” We were unwelcome immigrants outside of our land and savages that needed to be civilized within it. Today, the Irish are largely viewed as white — though there are Irish people of all races and ethnicities — and Irish Americans have fully assimilated. Many of us don’t know our history — there are Irish Americans who are anti-immigration, are cops, are in the military and vote for and support fascists, while one day a year letting loose with paddywhackery of the finest order. We don green T-shirts touting our kissability, drink Guinness, joke about how our culture is being drunk and sing songs without knowing their meaning.

The fundamental difference between Black Americans and Irish Americans in the 19th century was that Irish Americans could choose to become white. We made compromising decisions, actively opposing racial equality — to the chagrin of our families in Ireland. Some of us chose to step on the heads of fellow immigrant and Black workers to achieve a modicum of better treatment from our oppressors. We were able to access not only better jobs, but jobs that gave us political power. The once-jailed became the jailer. 

We have a federal administration of fascists filled with Irish Americans — Kennedy, Bondi, Mulvaney, Duffy. Meanwhile, Northern Irish people remain oppressed by the British, a cultural genocide continues and children starve in West Belfast.

Western tourists, including Irish Americans, visit Ireland and leave with sentiments like, “beautiful land, but the food was awful,” or “the Irish are so rude.” I’ve been told by tourists that Irish people and their food is “stinky.” Many Irish Americans with the thinnest veneer of Irish pride visit the country hoping to feel something and come away feeling confused about why Irish people didn’t roll out the welcome mat for them. This is colonization of the mind. 

We have sufficiently joined the ranks of the oppressor to the extent that we can deny or even support the oppression of Irish people but still feel entitled to the land and the culture. It’s not good enough to play “plastic paddy” one day a year as an Irish American. We must become archaeologists of our history and unearth the beauty and ugliness of our American story. Once we are face-to-face with our ancestors, we must ask ourselves: now that I see the reflection of my oppression, will I stand with those who are currently experiencing oppression? 

A man who ignores the cancer spreading through his body is still dying of cancer. The labor movement is sick with illnesses we cannot ignore. It is Zionism, it is nationalism, it is racism, sexism, ableism and antisemitism. It’s xenophobia. It is ‘American workers first.’ It is capitulating to maintain funding or gain political power, and it is denying, ignoring and funding genocide.

Irish people are still fighting for a United Ireland — for “Brits out” and for freedom of cultural and religious practice. In their oppression, some have capitulated to the British. There are Irish in Northern Ireland who enjoy the “benefits” of living under the United Kingdom’s rule, but many continue the fight. The fight is not solitary; it is global. In Derry, a mural demands a free Palestine. Irish artists make music, paintings and poetry that depict the struggle against colonization as inextricable among Ireland, Palestine, Indigenous people and all those oppressed across the world. These bonds run deep. In 1847, the Choctaw Nation sent money to Ireland to help during the British genocide of Ireland, the Great Famine. In 2020, the Irish returned this old favor with donations to support the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The story of how the Irish became white isn’t a lesson solely for Irish Americans; it’s a timely conversation for all white workers to engage in. We are again sitting in a moment where white workers are simultaneously oppressed by the ultra-wealthy and being offered opportunities to trade in our class solidarity for an American dream revival. It doesn’t matter that the dream doesn’t exist and can never be actualized. The promise is enough for many of us. 

Will we choose comfortability and ease by trading in immigrant workers, Black workers, trans workers and every other worker the wealthy target next? Will we sit back while our tax dollars are used to bomb Palestinians and Iranians? While our leaders foment political upheaval in Venezuela? While our government maintains a friendship with British oppressors?

Ireland is seeing a resurgence of resistance in the British-occupied six counties: Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Derry and Tyrone. Across a unified Ireland, people are dusting off the Irish language, donning keffiyehs and calling for international solidarity of the working class.

Resistance is messy. It’s bloody, compromising to our moral fiber and uncompromising in its demands. We may never see the fruit of our blood-sowed fields. But we cannot hide from it. The revolution comes to the cities, the countrysides, the bankers, the laborers, the bakers and the officers. This promise from history is terrifying but it is also comforting. Within the promise is a kernel, a sproutling, whispering, whispering, whispering: tiocfaidh ár lá, our day will come.

This article appears in April 15, 2026.