Living in the Bronx in the 1960s, my Irish mother sent my little sister and me to St. Simon Stock’s Catholic rectory to get a Mass card. We were probably 10 and 8 years old, respectively, and as we waited for the local priest to write out the card, he asked us where we were from. When I said we were born in London, he replied, “So you are a couple of limeys?”
We had no idea what that word meant, but we didn’t like it. We ran home to our mom and indignantly told her what the priest said. She laughed and said he was teasing us about being born in England. The fact that decades later I still remember that story is a reminder that immigrants have always been made to feel like “the other.”
In the 1980s, when I was working at a very elite organization, a colleague told me her parents would never invite me to their home because “the Irish ruined Boston.”
Deriding the newcomer is nothing new. It’s been happening since the founding of our country, and while such words sting, it never stops us from coming to America or becoming as American as those born here.
I have been thinking about my Irish-born parents a lot this summer and our own immigrant story. In August, we will be in the United States 61 years. My parents, from Galway and Monaghan, Ireland, met and married in London. My sister and I were born in London. Like so many before them, my parents packed up a trunk, some suitcases, and left everything behind to get on a plane that brought us first to Pittsburgh, and then to the Bronx.
Like those we hear about today from Central America, Mexico, Haiti, Liberia, Somalia and countless other countries, they took the plunge with little education and not much money to pursue the dream to make it in the United States. They both worked hard; my mother worked as an apartment building superintendent for 15 years.
That building in the Bronx, with 25 families, was the home to immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Eastern Europe, Italy and Poland. They were Catholics and Jews, and a few had fled the Holocaust. They all had a story of where they came from and a dream for themselves and for their children.
As soon as they could, my parents became naturalized citizens and because we did it as a family, so did my sister and I. I can still remember my parents studying for the civics portion of the naturalization test around the kitchen table. This is why I strongly believe in supporting naturalization services and outreach as an important part of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s immigrant integration portfolio.
In this current climate, it is important to remind my Irish-American community (and respective Italian, Polish, German, Russian, Lebanese, among other immigrant communities) that there was a time not that long ago that they were “the other,” that they were told to “go back to where you came from.” And if you don’t believe me, just google “ethnic slurs.” Wikipedia has an entire section on this!
Those of us who choose to be American, do so with the passion and love for America that is as strong, if not stronger, than those who were lucky to be born here. And like my own family, the majority have thrived, succeeded and contributed to what makes the United States still a beacon of hope.
No one said it better than former president Ronald Reagan, another Irish American: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany, or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk or Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
Mannion directs the democracy program at Carnegie Corporation of New York, the philanthropic foundation established in 1911 by Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie.
