Non-Nationals

I’m intrigued by this question because I am a non-Irish person who has lived in Ireland on a student visa but now lives in America.

I know that it bothers most Irish people when an American calls himself Irish, but I grew up being told I was. I no longer say I am Irish, even to other Americans, but Irish patriotism and pride was instilled in me growing up. My mother (2nd generation American) has Irish citizenship, but from what I can tell there is no way for me to obtain citizenship, and Irish immigration laws look quite strict when it comes to an American wanting to move there.

I’m not really resentful of this: the Irish nation has the right to extend citizenship to whomever it likes, I suppose. But I am always a bit astounded by the eagerness with which an African Muslim or Chinese immigrant who lives in Dublin and works for a multinational corporation is called “Irish,” while I, a tea-drinking, Catholic, Gaelic football-watching Irish American can never be.

I’m sorry if this seems rant-like. I’ve just always been a little disappointed by how strict people seem to be about categories when such strictness is least necessary, and how lax when it is more necessary.

Optatus, you might be amused by an unintended effect that your post had. Just this morning, after reading this, I've decided to go back to drinking tea after months (or maybe years) of drinking coffee, and also to start taking an interest in GAA games. (Reading the results, at least.)

I realize this has its comical side, but I can't help feeling guilty. National identity IS about these simple things. My mind had been moving in this direciton already.

You have written such wonderful things about tea! I’m surprised to learn you’ve been drinking coffee!

I know what you mean about feeling guilt about these things. I have really liked Gaelic football for a while, but only recently started watching it with GAA Go. I like that the players have a connection with their county, and (as you have often pointed out) it’s “Gaelic revival” history. The guilt, though, is that it’s the only sport I care about. I’ve never been able to get interested in American football, baseball, etc. I kind of like hockey but don’t really follow it. I think it’s from the fact that they’re professional sports with players from all over.

To end with a humorous observation, after getting used to Gaelic football, soccer looks strange. It looks like the players have forgotten about the top half of the world.

Mexico is an odd case because racial ancestry means different things down there and most white hispanics, as in pure Iberian stock, don't consider themselves Spanish, or Portugese, but rather consider themselves seperate culturally and refuse being referred to as Spanish et all. In fact they consider themselves a different ethnicity, indeed, several different ethnicity. When a Mexican whose as white as snow says he's a 'Mexican' he means his nationality, not his ethnicity, in which case his 'ethnicity isn't Spanish, its whatever region of Mexico he's from. Its basically an extension of european mentality, rather than the daughter nations of Europe considering themselves whatever their ancestry is, they consider their ethnicity to be what their more immediate ancestors are.

In the US its both simpler and more complicated. While Cleary is correct in that Irish/Italian/etc Americans mostly consider themselves as Irish, this is, I think, almost explicitly due to the hostile anti-Catholic nature of the Americas, where assimilation was partially slowed down, not sped up by the hostility. Yet in spite of this, like the Mexican example, there is a sizeable portion of White Americans who consider themselves 'Ethnically' American as well as culturally and politically, though from the one map I saw with this, it seemed to cluster mostly around the Appalachan mountain range. If someone more familiar with America can correct me on this, please do so. In Mexico this has never been the problem, most racial tensions being Meztizo and White and their intermingling and separation from one another, and everyone was Catholic and most immigrants were almost never protestant, so the whites mostly got drowned out by the bigger ethnically Iberian White Hispanics culturally and ethnically and sided with them and integrated more readily both from their lack of ability and lack of pressure to create enclaves (like I have noticed in how the Irish culturally assimilated their conquerors, the Vikings and the Normans respectively, having the same religion made this FAR easier over the centuries)

This is mostly useless additions to this conversation I know, I just thought since both America and Mexico were being used as the two main 'Assimilationist' cultures, I thought elucidating both the racial, ethnic and culturally forms of assimilation and how they differed in different circumstances, might help give better elucidation and insight on Cleary's point: The Muslims simply _cannot_ be assimilated, even if the immigration was slowed considerably, because, yes, they are too different. There is a point where the difference is too great for integration to exist easily. In Ireland all it took was a difference of Christian denomination to prevent the famous Gaelic assimilation of other white, so the muslims have next to no chance of eventually full integration.