emmigrants from erin

When I lay me down to sleep, the ugly bugs around me creep, bad luck to the wink that I can sleep, while working on the railroad. This was a common riddle or song that the Irish would sing while beating down on nails for the railroad system all day long. This song really hit me hard because it sounds very similar to the Christian prayer that many children say before they go to bed. In my history class at my high school we learned of the potato famine, but never anything to the extent of discrimination that took place when the arrived in America. Takaki explains throughout this chapter that the Irish were not considered “white” but instead another version of the African American slaves. This began a hate war between the Irish heritage, and the African American descendants. They came up with songs and rhymes with threats of rage if one would approach them. They viewed blacks as “a soulless race”. The Irish were not only affected by the black race, but also by the dominant group who claimed the Irish were not white at all and continued to look down upon them. The women who worked in homes as maids or nanny’s were not to have husbands because it was of an inconvenience for them. However, one may think that being a nanny would be better then working the mills with degrading men, but if you really look at it either job was horrific on them. For instance, if you worked in the domestic care field then you had to constantly live with those people and get looked down upon constantly and work twenty-four seven. While in the mills you were working with men who were very degrading, however, you could leave at the end of the day and put all of that slander away.
In summary while reading this chapter it really opened my eyes to how history repeats itself over and over. One would think that people would learn from the past mistakes and stop trying to get more and more. Also, it surprised me just how much they overlooked the similarities between the British and the Irish men. For the extent of which the British exaggerated how important color was they really pushed aside the extreme paleness in which the Irish were. My heritage is largely from the Irish side and before reading this I never really realized just how many struggles the Irish settlers went through just to get their foot in door. I will never forget many of the songs I have read in this chapter, they have really struck a nerve while reading through some of them. The Irish men had a hard life, just as the natives, and the slaves before that.