Going Beyond The Green: Discovering the Irish-American Identity

Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? This question is universal; building our identity is something that all people do from the time they are born to the time they die. It is a continuous process of discovery and re-discovery that makes us who we are as people and determines the face that we show the world. But how is it that we discover this identity? What is it that makes us who we are? Philosophers, writers and thinkers throughout the ages too, have asked this question. Is it our parents, our skin color, or how much money we have? Where we’re from? Or is it something deeper, something far more existential that lies within us; is it something that we can define? In attempting to answer this question for myself I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of cultural heritage and identity. This is a very important part of how we establish our identity as people. The question I have been exploring is, how is cultural identity constructed? Is it entirely a result of the geographic heritage of our families, is it the cultural surroundings in which we were raised, or something that we define for ourselves by the choices we make? These questions led me to a book by politician and civil rights activist Tom Hayden titled, Irish on the Inside, and a frank, sad, but poignant essay by Irish Writer, Robert McLiam Wilson called “Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity.” After reading and reflecting on these three texts, I am coming to believe that cultural heritage and identity are just as much a creation of the individual as they are a result of family background, or hereditary geography.
Irish Americans face struggle today, which is complicated by geography. We are often three generations or more out of Ireland and are separated from it by an ocean. This makes it that much harder to hold on to our heritage in a society that demands conformity. Because of this, the Irish American has been absorbed, for the most part into the unfortunate category of “White/Non-Hispanic.”(Hayden, 2) By being lumped into the category of “white”, we are robbed of status as an independent ethnicity with its own rich history. Should we accept this as natural; simply fade into the obscurity of white America and forget our heritage as mere nostalgia? Hayden explores this when he writes, “Today’s Irish-Americans face a post-assimilation issue…Should we not embrace our Americanism and forget the past?...Many of us think so…but many others maintain at least as sentimental attachment, and rising numbers have a kind of hunger for ethnic identity that Americanism cannot meet except superficially.”(Hayden, 29) The superficial Irish-American identity is all too evident in American society. Images of leprechauns, shamrocks and pots o’ gold at the end of the rainbow, make a mockery of the rich heritage of Ireland. St. Patrick’s Day, as it is celebrated in the United States stands as a testament to the pervasive misconstruction of what it mean to be Irish. There is much more to the Irish persona, then drinking green beer and singing “Danny boy” once a year. McLiam Wilson, an native Irishman describes this superficiality. He writes, “When well received, this fake concoction of myth and bullshit is reflected in the mirror of imprecise good will and sentimental foolishness…Over the years I’ve watched the fundamental concepts of what it is to be Irish being altered by common-currency American errors.”(McLiam Wilson, 282) This superficial viewpoint of what it means to be Irish may have encouraged a generally positive; if not sentimental attitude but does it do more harm than good? How are Irish Americans to tell the difference between our own distinct heritage and the cartoony, “lucky charms” image that has forced its way into American pop-culture? Constructing a racial identity is hard enough without having these distracting inaccuracies to mislead and confuse us. McLiam Wilson talks about the effects of this pop-culture image in Ireland itself. He says, “Here in the ‘old country,’ when we hear that New Yorkers are in green-kilted bagpipe bands(an entirely Scottish phenomenon) on St. Patrick’s Day, we immediately look around for somewhere to buy green kilts and bagpipes.”(McLiam Wilson, 282) Even the Irish themselves cannot seem to escape the fate of the cheap plastic shamrock that is “Irishness.” If the citizens of Ireland itself are swept up into the wave of commercialized irishisms, than how are we, who are so far removed from the “old country” to tell the forgeries from the genuine article? In order to understand what it means to be Irish, we have to go beyond the green, and try to understand the rich history of Ireland, and the struggles that brought our grandparents and great-grandparents across the ocean to start new lives in America.
The monster that is American consumerism seems to have no patience for history and heritage if it won’t sell. American culture likes to appropriate, very little in fact can be considered uniquely American. The American melting pot tends to take aspects of other cultures and integrate them into itself, warping and changing them as it does so. This is what has happened to the Irish in America. The aspects of Irish culture that were absorbed into the America have become twisted and unrecognizable, their significance forgotten. Those aspects of Irish culture that did not fit into American culture were cast aside, and the Irish-Americans have been forced over the years to cast off their Irish roots and simply become Americans.
With these challenges, it can be very difficult to determine how exactly an American of any background is to construct their identity. In the end I think it boils down to choice. In choosing to be Irish, or any of the hundreds of other cultures represented in the US, we begin to lay the building blocks of our personal cultural identities. To paraphrase an old adage, “we think, therefore we are.” At some point we decide, consciously, to be what we are going to be. Our country of origin may have a seemingly insurmountable influence, but we must choose whether or not to embrace our true heritage. Tom Hayden relates the story of how he came to embrace his heritage. He writes, “in 1968, accused of being less than a red blooded American by the authorities, having been beaten up and indicted in Chicago, having been targeted for “neutralization” by J. Edgar Hoover, I saw marchers in Northern Ireland singing “We Shall Overcome” and, in an epiphany, discovered that I was Irish on the Inside.”(Hayden, 4) Whether this realization is born out of crisis or a gradual process of self-discovery, we must each decide who, and what, we are. Men and women must decide to construct their own identity and heritage. When we come to the place where this decision is based not on the whims of others, geographical origin or the demands of family, skin color or language; then we realize that each one is responsible for themselves and no one else, and we can begin to move toward unity and understanding.


Works Cited.
Hayden, Tom. Irish On The Inside. London: Verso, 2001.

Mcliam Wilson, Robert. “Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity.” The Anchor Essay
Annual: The Best of 2008. Ed. Philip Lopate. New York: Anchor, 1998. 280-86