Brooklyn is about how “America welcomes white immigrants”, apparently.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Americans have been moaning about immigrants for centuries be it Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans or whomever.

And not even immigration, migration from the South to the North in the 20's and 30's, or rather the Blacks getting uppity and trying to make a life for themselves.

Wibbs wrote: »

That flic is set in the 1950's? My dad lived there for a time back then, his dad moved there in the 1920's and both had no problem settling in or being welcomed. Quite the opposite in fact. In New York anyway. Same for two good friends of mine's dads. Maybe it was different for women, but I'd be surprised to hear it was.

Eugene Norman wrote: »

The hostility was in the 19C

Yep. The common slur for the Irish in New York (and probably the rest of America) was the "dirty Irish". Other ethnicities tended to view Irish people as filthy and unkempt, which was some what ironic as the Italians, Jews and Germans who lived in the lower class areas of New York weren't shining examples of hygiene either.

The slur probably comes from the fact that most Irish immigrants to America were poor and therefore subject to all the problems that plague poor people and in tenements where numerous families had to use the same facilities, hygiene took a back seat. One outside toilet between 20 families soon got pretty rank.

But, even in areas such as Five Points or Hell's Kitchen, where the poorer immigrants were sent after the landed at Ellis Island, the Irish were known as the "dirty Irish" as the name had taken hold everywhere. They also had a bad reputation for rowdiness and drink. That is being drunk, as opposed to making and selling drink, which is what a lot of the German immigrants did. Other immigrants took their trades to America too. Trades that their families had built up over many years, whereas a lot of Irish immigrants merely took themselves and their physical ability to do labour.