Absence of Evidence of Absence

July 28, 2015 12:26 AM

In a 2002 paper, history professor Richard Jensen claimed that Irish Americans had perpetuated a Myth of Victimization: "No Irish Need Apply" signs were "extremely rare or nonexistent" in the United States, and "Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. " High school student Rebecca A. Fried recently debunked that argument in a paper of her own. Their debate continued in the comments of an Irish Central article.
posted by Knappster (54 comments total)

That this kind of critique (by a high school student, no less!) is now possible is testimony to the search power and increasing regional comprehensiveness of digitized newspaper databases. 13 years ago, these tended to extend to single, nationally prominent titles only, like the Times (London), with historically distorting effects for academic researchers. Also, at the beginning of the '00s, there was, perhaps, more benefit of the doubt accorded to studies that relied on the kinds of digital sources that were at that time still unfamiliar to the majority of professional historians: a kind of "trust what comes out of the black box" approach, if you will. Now, obviously, things are different. When databases like this are ubiquitous, the key is interpreting and quantifying the results. And it's interesting to see Jensen trying to demonstrate his superior academic capital in the comments by asserting that Fried lacks the skills to do this properly, thus overestimating the significance of her results and being unable to cleanse her data effectively. This is the result of a revolution in the way primary sources are interrogated and it's fascinating to see its consequences play out.
posted by Sonny Jim at 1:03 AM on July 28, 2015 [25 favorites]

I think Jensen would be in a stronger position if his original thesis had been more nuanced. He probably is correct to say that specific window job ads with NINA were uncommon. But the conclusion to be drawn seems to be not that the whole thing was a myth, but that the job ads epitomise a real general attitude of which there is a lot of evidence. The signs are remembered because they sum up that climate in a pithy form (and also because of their peculiar offensiveness, probably even more trenchant in an American context to people who might have hoped to escape the prejudice they'd come to expect from the British).
posted by Segundus at 1:35 AM on July 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Professor Jensen decided to challenge Rebecca Fried in the comments section of Irish Central which published a detailed article on the teenager’s research. Dr. Jensen wrote:

I’m the PhD who wrote the original article. I’m delighted a high school student worked so hard and wrote so well.

Oh wow. What a prick. She demolishes him and still manages to be gracious about it - emotional labour anyone? - although "you can have the last word if you want it" made me laugh. It's clear from her article the mass "delusion" Jensen names was in fact just "memory". She's definitely destined for great things.
posted by billiebee at 1:42 AM on July 28, 2015 [43 favorites]

Anyone else annoyed that one has to pay 39$ to read the article?

I wonder if she had the legal standing to sign a contract (being presumably under 18) to sign away her rights to her academic work.

Great story though; if I hadn't known so beforehand, I would have guessed that Jenson was the high schooler and Fried was the Professor (I'm sure the latter is just a matter of time though).
posted by el io at 1:59 AM on July 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

I would have guessed that Jenson was the high schooler and Fried was the Professor

Okay, this describes about 20 paragraphs rolling around in my head in under 20 words: perfect.
posted by taz at 2:13 AM on July 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Only 17 and already behind a meaningless academic paywall! Her parents' alma mater's librarian must be so proud...

No, but seriously, the summary of the showdown in comments at the "recently debunked" link is definitely worth reading even (especially) if you can't RTFA. You can feel the grin in her replies. Absolutely destined for greatness in her field.
posted by No-sword at 2:20 AM on July 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

does anyone have a name (or even references to papers) for the more general topic here of arguing over whether particular people are victims and/or which groups are "most deserving"? i'm particularly interested in the competition between groups (which is only implicit here) and us domestic policies.
posted by andrewcooke at 2:25 AM on July 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow. I had definitely believed the previous assertions that this was mostly a myth. Usually rolled my eyes at all my older family members saying it was a thing. Glad I never got into an argument with them about it or I would have some apologies to send right now.

Wanted- A German Protestant or colored girl...No Irish need apply.

Wow. At least the distaste for the Irish seems to have been comparatively shorter lived than other hatreds in the US.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:32 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

How interesting. I was familiar with an inverted form of this: a sort of proto-Fascist, William Shaw, alleged that he had seen a sign in London's (mostly Jewish) East End saying "No English Need Apply". When called on it he couldn't cite any instances; he called for public assistance in locating one but nobody came forward, and he eventually retired in embarrassment. That made me predisposed to think that the anti-Irish signs were false too, but it just goes to show ...
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:35 AM on July 28, 2015

Wow dude, N=2 man, like, that's such a small number. I'm the PhD that came up with that number.
posted by oceanjesse at 2:39 AM on July 28, 2015

I too believed the reports that NINA was a myth, and now I wish I'd read the actual paper because holy shit that was some egregious garbage.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:45 AM on July 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh wow. What a prick.

My main reason for staying up late to post this FPP was to further publicize this fact.
posted by Knappster at 2:59 AM on July 28, 2015 [16 favorites]

Now that's what you call a shellacking. I'm glad I never even heard of this guy's paper in the first place.
posted by XMLicious at 3:16 AM on July 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

How interesting. I was familiar with an inverted form of this: a sort of proto-Fascist, William Shaw, alleged that he had seen a sign in London's (mostly Jewish) East End saying "No English Need Apply". When called on it he couldn't cite any instances; he called for public assistance in locating one but nobody came forward, and he eventually retired in embarrassment. That made me predisposed to think that the anti-Irish signs were false too, but it just goes to show

That wasn't even plausible though, was it? Why would such a sign even be written in English?
posted by atrazine at 3:45 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well...so English people could read it and know not to apply?
posted by Drinky Die at 3:53 AM on July 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

But ... but ... if they couldn't read it then ... [fumes silently]

Yes, the "no English" one is implausible for a whole lot of reasons, including the fact that Jews in the East End were subject to anti-Semitic violence: they'd hardly be stupid enough to do something so provocative. The "no Irish" one was always plausible, though, and I now wonder if the imaginary "no English" one was a sort of reverse-racism memory of the genuine "no-Irish" ones.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:58 AM on July 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's like a Hirschfeld drawing: How many NINAs can you find?
posted by DanSachs at 4:02 AM on July 28, 2015 [17 favorites]

Footnote 67 of Jensen's original article is interesting and perhaps indicative of where he's coming from in the piece as a whole:

Identification of a minority's dysfunctional and pathological internal problems make an investigator vulnerable to attacks for "blaming the victim" or "racism." A firestorm of criticism engulfed sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965, when he reported on the condition of the Negro family. Daryl Michael Scott, "The Politics of Pathology: The Ideological Origins of the Moynihan Controversy," Journal of Policy History (1996) 8: 81—105.

posted by Sonny Jim at 4:10 AM on July 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jensen's real strength is bullshit theory. Actually using and understanding primary sources is beyond him.
posted by Area Man at 4:21 AM on July 28, 2015

I've been waiting a long time for this to be debunked!

There were so many issues with Jensen's claims that I always thought a 10 year old could see through the bullcrap. I was incorrect. It only required a teenager :)

Sidenote: You can still see NINA job adverts in modern times if you head on down to Australia.

NINA Down Under
posted by Redgrendel2001 at 4:28 AM on July 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ha! I was just on Trove trying to debunk Jensen's claim that "historians have not discovered reports of any [NINA ads or signs] in the United States, Canada or Australia." It took me about two minutes to find one in the Adelaide Observer (25 September 1852): "WANTED, a SERVANT OF ALL WORK. Good wages will be given. No Irish need apply. Apply to Mrs. T. Nelson, Franklin-Street."
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:35 AM on July 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

Identification of a minority's dysfunctional and pathological internal problems make an investigator vulnerable to attacks for "blaming the victim" or "racism.

Yeah, it's fine for him to conclude that NINA signs didn't exist in large numbers, and to speculate that an English song about NINA signs in England had influenced US perceptions, but asserting pathology ...?

(This happens more often than I'm comfortable with, in the Social Sciences.)
posted by vitabellosi at 4:51 AM on July 28, 2015

I grew up hearing stories about No Irish Need Apply, and never heard that it was supposed to be a myth until now!

I never had reason to doubt it though, because my family normally doesn't dwell on that stuff. As far as claiming victimization, my parents were definitely more concerned about racism against blacks, which is definitely not true of most Irish-Americans.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:53 AM on July 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

(This happens more often than I'm comfortable with, in the Social Sciences.)

The assignation of collective 'pathology' to ethnic groups actually happens very rarely in the social sciences. Maybe you're thinking of politics?
posted by clockzero at 4:59 AM on July 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

The research focus is on an interesting social artifact. A window sign is so temporary, transient and would leave no hard evidence of itself after disposal. I can imagine similar arguments 100 years from now about the prevalance of "Baby on Board" signs in car windows. I also anticpate many future researchers will reject as impossible the reported volume of post-it notes used by our generation.
posted by klarck at 5:29 AM on July 28, 2015 [10 favorites]

The research focus is on an interesting social artifact. A window sign is so temporary, transient and would leave no hard evidence of itself after disposal. I can imagine similar arguments 100 years from now about the prevalance of "Baby on Board" signs in car windows. I also anticpate many future researchers will reject as impossible the reported volume of post-it notes used by our generation.

Like the NINA thing, future researchers will just assume we thought we saw them because of a song.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:33 AM on July 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

I never had reason to doubt it though, because my family normally doesn't dwell on that stuff. As far as claiming victimization, my parents were definitely more concerned about racism against blacks, which is definitely not true of most Irish-Americans.

Yeah, I think that part of the reason that historians of Irish-America have been so gleeful about debunking the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever!) thing is that they often encounter it in explicitly racist contexts. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that the Irish didn't used to be white, and they earned their way into whiteness by their virtue and hard work, and that shows that currently racially-oppressed people deserve it. So it feels a little more vital to point out that the Irish were always white, at least as far back as the first census in 1790, and their whiteness gave them a lot of extra tools with which to confront the discrimination they faced.

But Jensen was a member of an academic Irish diaspora studies listserv that I subscribed to, and he always came across as a bit of a gadfly. (Actually, he sometimes came across as mildly unhinged.) I think most members thought that he significantly overstated his thesis. For one thing, he found NINA advertisements aimed at women and decided that they were, for some reason, not important. In 2002, when he published his research, there just weren't a lot of digitized newspapers, and they weren't a representative sample of all the newspapers that were published in the US. He searched on the specific term "No Irish Need Apply", and there could have been other ways of expressing a preference for non-Irish applicants. The thing with modern people buying the NINA bar signs was fun, and I use it as an example of how apparent historical evidence can be deceptive, but it's likely that most NINA signs would have been hand-lettered and wouldn't have survived. And finally, if you've actually engaged with primary sources, I don't think it's credible to say that there was no significant anti-Irish sentiment or discrimination at all. You don't have to believe that the Irish were the Most! Oppressed! People! Ever! to see evidence that there was anti-Irish, and not just anti-Catholic, sentiment in the US for a long time, although to different degrees in different times and places.

I'm actually really curious about how this high school student ended up researching and writing this and then how it came to be published.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:34 AM on July 28, 2015 [35 favorites]

The assignation of collective 'pathology' to ethnic groups actually happens very rarely in the social sciences. Maybe you're thinking of politics?

Nope! Thinking of my many years in a PhD program in the social sciences.

The "this" in my statement This happens more often than I'm comfortable with, in the Social Sciences. -- was more about the process of counting something (evidence of NINA signs), speculating on what might be going on (there was an English song, popular in the US at the time, that talked about NINA signs that US Irish probably internalized as fact), and then drawing a conclusion ostensibly-based on the counting one did of one's narrow definition of "evidence" (and not considering other sources of information about the institutionalization and ubiquity 'NINA' such as newspaper advertisements or news articles documenting meetings where NINA signs were discussed) - but really basing the conclusion on what one was looking to demonstrate in the first place.
posted by vitabellosi at 5:51 AM on July 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm actually really curious about how this high school student ended up researching and writing this and then how it came to be published.

I used to work at SFS, and it is one of the most prestigious schools in DC. It is where Chelsea Clinton went to high school, and it is where Malia and Sasha Obama attend school. It is a place where college and even graduate level coursework is pretty normal for high schoolers. The school reimburses teachers who choose to pursue PhDs.

This isn't to say that students at a normal high school are incapable of this work, but that it is unsurprising that this student had access to the level of research tools that would be necessary to write this piece in the first place, and access to the kind of academic mentors who would say "good term paper! You should go ahead and submit it to a major academic journal."
posted by a fiendish thingy at 5:53 AM on July 28, 2015 [20 favorites]

I find it odd that Prof. Jensen wouldn't be familiar with Mark Twain's book "Roughing It," (pub. 1872) in which the Buck Fanshaw's Funeral chapter contains at least three instances of the NINA pronouncement. Twain's genius was in comic exaggeration, it is true, but always using available materials.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:33 AM on July 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

[add to activity] [add to favorites] 21 users marked this as a favorite [!]

That this kind of critique (by a high school student, no less!) is now possible is testimony to the search power and increasing regional comprehensiveness of digitized newspaper databases. 13 years ago, these tended to extend to single, nationally prominent titles only, like the Times (London), with historically distorting effects for academic researchers.

13 years ago, I was an undergraduate working on my thesis. I hand scanned microfilm of 18th century newspapers, looking for any and all mentions of what I was interested in. (Then I moved into a field where few of the records were microfilmed, let alone digitized, and all are handwritten - because I'm a masochist). You would think that a professor, being paid, would put in a similar effort.

The student has done excellent work - she should be proud. Without reading her original article, though, I am curious about her methods: if I were doing this kind of study, I wouldn't use a search for "No Irish Need Apply", but rather look at all (or a random sample) of the job advertisements for a given period of time, categorize them by gender and type of work, and see what percentage had anti-Irish statements (which could also have had more than one phrasing). Not only would this give a better idea of how common this was in comparison to the universe of job advertisements, the characteristics themselves would be interesting (were Anglos more discriminatory against Irish women than Irish men? Which jobs were thought inappropriate for Irish versus others?).

Of course, this would take a bloody long time, and there is little support for this kind of detailed, thorough historical research in the academy.
posted by jb at 6:41 AM on July 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

if I were doing this kind of study, I wouldn't use a search for "No Irish Need Apply"

But the focus of her research was proving Jensen wrong in his assertion that these advertisements never existed, not on making a claim about how common they actually were.

Of course, this would take a bloody long time, and there is little support for this kind of detailed, thorough historical research in the academy.

She's not even in the academy yet! She probably wrote this in the midst of several extracurriculars and taking multiple AP exams.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:47 AM on July 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

Nope! Thinking of my many years in a PhD program in the social sciences.

The "this" in my statement This happens more often than I'm comfortable with, in the Social Sciences. -- was more about the process of counting something (evidence of NINA signs), speculating on what might be going on (there was an English song, popular in the US at the time, that talked about NINA signs that US Irish probably internalized as fact), and then drawing a conclusion ostensibly-based on the counting one did of one's narrow definition of "evidence" (and not considering other sources of information about the institutionalization and ubiquity 'NINA' such as newspaper advertisements or news articles documenting meetings where NINA signs were discussed) - but really basing the conclusion on what one was looking to demonstrate in the first place.

I see; so your complaint is about a certain way of doing qualitative research. That referent didn't come across in the other comment but I see what you're saying. It reminds me a bit of Biernacki's exciting work on developing new, ostensibly higher standards for evidence in social science.
posted by clockzero at 6:53 AM on July 28, 2015

Both the appendix and her response to Jensen's pseudo-statistical argument is bad-ass. Well done.
posted by Vitamaster at 6:54 AM on July 28, 2015

does anyone have a name (or even references to papers) for the more general topic here of arguing over whether particular people are victims and/or which groups are "most deserving"? i'm particularly interested in the competition between groups (which is only implicit here) and us domestic policies.
posted by andrewcooke

The Oppression Olympics?
posted by fiercecupcake at 6:57 AM on July 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

if I were doing this kind of study, I wouldn't use a search for "No Irish Need Apply", but rather look at all (or a random sample) of the job advertisements for a given period of time, categorize them by gender and type of work, and see what percentage had anti-Irish statements (which could also have had more than one phrasing).

Well, I mean, go for it! That would be great! And if some PhD student wants to do that for a dissertation, that too would be great. But that wasn't her project. Her project was debunking an article in a prestigious academic journal. It would have been dumb for her to attempt your project, because this was literally her high-school homework, and as a high-school student with lot of other obligations, she didn't have time to undertake years of full-time research. She chose a project that could be accomplished with the resources available to her, and it turned out to be historically significant. Go her! Now other people, with different resources, are welcome to build on her research, because that's how scholarship works.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:57 AM on July 28, 2015 [12 favorites]

I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that the Irish didn't used to be white, and they earned their way into whiteness by their virtue and hard work, and that shows that currently racially-oppressed people deserve it.

But Jensen was a member of an academic Irish diaspora studies listserv that I subscribed to

ArbitraryAndCapricious, thanks for sharing that part about the listserv! Now I am curious if this book was ever discussed there (and if so, in what context)? Title: How the Irish Became White (by Noel Ignatiev, first published in 1995).

[My apologies if I posted this all wrong. I'm new at linking.]
posted by quixotictic at 7:05 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ungh, the many many people cheering on the student based on recollections of their grandmothers telling them about seeing NINA signs...not really helping.

But wow, Jensen, way to move some goalposts. Good for Ms. Fried, she sounds like an exceptionally level-headed young researcher.
posted by desuetude at 7:08 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I didn't mean to criticize Fried (who is, after all, a high school student); I was first reacting to an earlier comment about Jenson's methods and the lack of digitization at the time. Her work is super impressive. I was just also slipping into thoughts about digitization in general and the problem of using searches for keywords over reading the corpus of sources.

He has no excuse - at the time he published the article, I was doing similar research as an undergrad (who also had four other classes and rent to pay - I was more stressed than the end of high school - though I did have a research assistant: my then-boyfriend, now-husband, thank you!)
posted by jb at 7:19 AM on July 28, 2015

a sort of proto-Fascist, William Shaw, alleged that he had seen a sign in London's (mostly Jewish) East End saying "No English Need Apply". When called on it he couldn't cite any instances; he called for public assistance in locating one but nobody came forward, and he eventually retired in embarrassment.

I yearn for those golden days when being caught in an absurd, bigoted lie would actually mean the end of one's career instead of a well-paid position as a talking head on a cable network.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:20 AM on July 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

Well, I mean, go for it! That would be great! And if some PhD student wants to do that for a dissertation, that too would be great

No, it wouldn't: because it would take too long, and the academy has no support for people who take the long (even if more rigorous) way around. An article's worth of research might take five years - and in other fields, will earn a PhD - but not in History.

And, ironically, the fact that Fried has published this article will mean that future students will be directed away from the topic. Because it's already seen as settled.
posted by jb at 7:27 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Faint of Butt, I'm afraid those golden days included careers ending for all kinds of ThoughtCrime, so I'd have to see more data before deciding whether or not we're worse off today.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:27 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also I came in here to try and chew my lip about the context in which NINA often gets trotted out, but of course ArbitraryAndCapricious did it better than I would have been able to!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:29 AM on July 28, 2015

Even if you go with his goalpost-shifting . . . how often do you see a "Help Wanted" sign that's typeset and made of wood or any other durable material? Not that often. Most businesses only occasionally need to put out such a sign, and the people they're trying to reach are motivated to pay attention and don't need to have their eye caught by big, flashy ad-type signs, so why spend lots of money? Most "Help Wanted" signs today are just pieces of paper or cardboard pasted up in a window -- I can't think of any good reason why it would be different in the 19th century. And that's not the kind of thing that gets kept around once the position has been filled, or that survives the test of time very well even if it's kept. Arguments from absence of evidence should always be subjected to a pretty high standard of proof, but especially when you're going to use them to accuse an entire immigrant group of self-pitying false memory.

BTW, here is Jensen's original abstract, taken directly from his website:

"Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory."

And from the end of the paper: "Historians engaging in cultural studies must beware the trap that privileges evidence derived from the protests of self-proclaimed victims. Practically every ethnoreligious group in America cherishes its martyrs and warns its members that outsiders "discriminate" against them, or would if they had the opportunity. . . The slogan identified an enemy to blame, and justified bully behavior on the city streets."

Charming, huh? From what he says about Irish women, you could just as easily conclude that there's no job discrimination against Latina women today -- after all, many of them seem to have successfully found jobs as maids, right?
posted by ostro at 9:38 AM on July 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also, there should be some kind of Euphemism of the Year award for suggesting that so many Irish (and black, and Swedish) women took positions as servants because they "had a strong commitment to service jobs."
posted by ostro at 9:39 AM on July 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

What I'm curious about is how effective Jensen's paper was in advancing his career as a historian. Anybody here know anything
posted by benito.strauss at 10:20 AM on July 28, 2015

I read that first essay randomly on the internet a while ago, but I had no idea it was generally respected. It stuck in my mind because the tone is so weird and non-academic (e.g. the repeated description of the Irish in America as having a collective "chip on their shoulder") and the argument keeps stumbling towards outright self-contradiction.

Which is not to say that his thesis is self-contradicting (which thesis, roughly, is that the Irish weren't discriminated against and any job problems were due to their own insularity and deficiencies in the Irish character, which they then blamed on everyone else, in part by creating the "Myth of Irish discrimination"), it's the individual points he makes often don't say what he seems to think they say. Like this one, arguing that the Irish were not that badly thought of:

[H]istorians point to contemporaries who commented unfavorably on the Irish, generalizing from a handful of cases to create a stereotype of the dominant views of all of American society. Now indeed the 19th century literature is filled with eyewitness and statistical descriptions of Irish drunkenness, crime, violence, poverty, extortion, insanity, ignorance, political corruption and lawless behavior. The reports come from many cities, from Catholics and non-Catholics, social scientists and journalists, Irish and non-Irish. 45 The question is not whether the Irish were admired. (They were not.) The argument that the dominant popular stereotypes of the Irish were especially nasty does not hold up under careful examination.

Really, "violence," "corruption," and "insanity" were not particularly nasty? Granted, that paragraph concludes that not "more than one in a thousand Americans considered the Irish as racially inferior, non-white or ape-like," but come on. Even if we give him "ape-like" (in a footnote, he also objects to the word "bestial"), are stereotypes of "drunkenness," "crime" and "extortion" really evidence that the Irish were probably not discriminated against? Because that's what he's presenting evidence for. It's refutation #2 in the section:

Can we prove there was no job discrimination against the Irish? Zero is too hard to "prove"—though no historian has found any evidence of any actual discrimination by any business or factory. 43 The main "evidence" referenced in the historical literature is three fold [...]

I mean, "insanity"? A group is generally diagnosed with "insanity" and that's given as evidence against job discrimination?

The weird part -- what made the essay memorable -- is that without ever quite saying it himself, the author seems to agree with and wants to vindicate those contemporary opinions (note how the word "eyewitness," resonant with subjectivity and bias, is propped up with the word passionless, objective word "statistical," even though the takeaway from that passage is all adjectives). He's certainly on the same page regarding "drunken" and "violent:" regarding the song in the beginning of the essay, he condescends that even though NINA was imaginary, "after a few rounds of singing and drinking, you could easily read the sign," and complains that "this is a song to encourage bullies." The term 'bully', in fact, he functionally appends to the list of contemporary stereotypes:

When Protestants denied NINA that perhaps just reinforced the Irish sense of conspiracy against them (even today people who deny NINA are suspected of prejudice.) The slogan served both to explain their poverty 35 and to identify a villain against whom it was all right retaliate on sight—a donnybrook for the foes of St. Patrick. 36 The myth justified bullying strangers and helped sour relations between Irish and everyone else.

The slogan identified an enemy to blame, and justified bully behavior on the city streets.

What's more, the American Irish also suffered from "self-defeating factors, such as heavy alcoholism, weak motivation, poor work habits, and disorganized family life," and "[contemporary] critics complained that the Irish had poor morals and a weak work ethic." Irish Americans are repeatedly described as holding a baseless grudge against the world, laboring under the "misperception or gross exaggeration that other Americans were prejudiced against them" and "systematically deluding themselves" that NINA signs ever existed. Not that NINA signs would be unreasonable, all things considered: Irish solidarity, secured via the NINA myth, meant that the Irish used "intimidation, strikes, arson, terrorism and destructive violence to settle any grievances they may have had with their employers."

Honestly, by the time he claims that "direct evidence that employers did not want Irish workers is absent," it's hard to believe. Who would want to hire these degenerates?

But apparently they were hired en-masse, often by "benign Protestant factory owners."

So why were they so bad at jobbing? Irish culture.

A likely explanation is the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish to always work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break away. (The slogan tells them that trying to make it in the Yankee world is impossible anyway.) No other European Catholic group seems to have shared that chip on the shoulder.

[...]

Social mobility depends upon strong family structures. Weak ties in a group would indicate fathers and uncles did not assist their kin. The Irish had a reputation for the opposite traits (clannishness and nepotism), but also had reportedly high rates of internal family discord. 49 On the other hand kinship ties could be too strong and impede upward mobility. Parents might demand more child labor, valuing family collective goals over the child's individualistic career potential.

Wait, the problem was that families didn't value "career potential?" Oh yeah. That's the other hobby horse in the essay:

The Irish approach discouraged entrepreneurship (which is positive-sum). It encouraged government work, and jobs (such as canal or railroad construction, longshoremen, transit) where government contacts or franchises were involved (thus allowing them to use their political muscle).

[...]

Comparing rates of social mobility assumes that the Irish were seeking that goal to the same extent as the Yankees. [...] A strikingly high proportion of talented Irish youth went into very low paying, very high prestige religious careers. The community more often honored priests and bishops than business entrepreneurs.

[...]

Rather few Irish became entrepreneurs; the community did not generate pools of financial capital. Perhaps more important was a low communal value on the individualistic businessman. Construction contracting seems to have been the only business in which they had any significant ownership role, and that depended on control of labor and access to government contracts rather than financial capital.

[...]

The quest for political patronage probably locked Irish men into overpaid but dead-end blue-collar jobs, and channeled talent into public administration rather than private entrepreneurship.

Etc. etc..

Throughout the essay, bits of a slightly different story poke through unacknowledged. When claiming that Irish Americans were never unable to find work as servants, the author informs us that: "despite scare stories in the anti-Catholic pamphlets, the Irish servants did not proselytize or interfere with household religious activity." The printing and distribution of these pamphlets does not occasion further comment. The existence of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic organizations is handwaved: their ultimate failure is cited as evidence, again, that there was no anti-Irish discrimination -- and for some reason, their failure is not parsed as political fortitude on the part of Irish Americans. Rather:

The conclusion is that, despite occasional temptations, Americans considered their "equal rights" republicanism to be incompatible with systematic economic or political discrimination against the Irish.

The overall picture painted is just incoherent. The newly arrived Irish were patently awful, but no one seemed to avoid them for it; the Irish urged each other to violence, but did not suffer violence themselves; they were insular, lazy and bad workers, yet they were politically successful; the rest of the country regarded them with bemused tolerance, and as thanks were bullied in the streets by deluded Irish hooligans.

It's weird reading a serious academic paper in which the author seems to recapitulate historical prejudices without realizing it, or where there's a visible aggrieved note, such as in lines like:

The myth was undeniable—anyone inside the group would be called a traitor for suggesting that internal weaknesses inside the Irish community caused its problems; anyone outside would be called a prejudiced bigot.

Historians need to be critical. Because a group truly believes it was a victim, does not make it so.

All that said, I originally came away from the essay thinking: "hunh. This dude really, really doesn't care for Irish people, but it looks like NINA was just a myth. I had no idea."

But no, it turns out that he is just terrible at ctrl+f. So thank you, Rebecca Fried.

(I don't mean to recapitulate anything Fried says in her essay -- I only read the summary -- I just had a strong response to the original essay which I never actually wrote down.)
posted by postcommunism at 10:46 AM on July 28, 2015 [12 favorites]

"Yeah, I think that part of the reason that historians of Irish-America have been so gleeful about debunking the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever!) thing is that they often encounter it in explicitly racist contexts. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that the Irish didn't used to be white, and they earned their way into whiteness by their virtue and hard work, and that shows that currently racially-oppressed people deserve it. So it feels a little more vital to point out that the Irish were always white, at least as far back as the first census in 1790, and their whiteness gave them a lot of extra tools with which to confront the discrimination they faced. "

Yeah, I remember working with an intern who was the daughter of muckity-mucks at Penn State, and she claimed that in University Park other parents wouldn't let their children play with her because she was Irish — in like '95. She used this to claim that she knew exactly what it was like to be black. It's a good thing I hadn't heard of Jensen, and that How The Irish Became White was part of my high school curriculum, because her perceptions could be charitably described as blarney.

I do know that for both the Irish and the Germans, the Civil War was part of how they got access to white privilege, with propaganda around Marye's Heights and the Neuces Massacre, respectively.
posted by klangklangston at 10:55 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent.

Yeah, kicking off the abstract with that reductio ad absurdum is melodramatic and so condescending. I don't think that anyone would quibble with the idea that "omnipresent" is an exaggeration of collective memory, but just because NINA signs were not literally plastered across every business does not mean that they were a complete myth, totally nonexistent.
posted by desuetude at 10:58 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

What I'm curious about is how effective Jensen's paper was in advancing his career as a historian. Anybody here know anything

The link to his paper lists him as retired, but I don't know how often he updated it. He first published in the early 1970s, though, so a 2002 article would have had exactly zero effect on his career.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:19 AM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Google Ngram is useful for quick checks of such things.
posted by jetsetsc at 12:20 PM on July 28, 2015

"No Irish Need Apply" was used in our family as an example of how attitudes change towards immigrants, never really in the context of "see we worked hard and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps" and more "they got used to us." We were expected to understand that the world would change for the recent immigrants of our own generation, so we should never say "No X Need Apply" to anyone else. Anyone who said the Irish had it as bad as the blacks would possibly get smacked upside the head. Again, I know this is not the norm.

An uncle told me a story I love though. He had just come home from college and he was wearing an "I Like Ike" button. My great-grandfather (a member of the Bookbinders Union) said to him, "Ah, I see what's going on. You've got a little money in your pocket and now you think you're good enough to be a Republican. Well, let me tell you something, you will never be good enough to be a Republican."
posted by maggiemaggie at 1:53 PM on July 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Dammit, now I've fallen into Trove and its rich and varied offerings of NINA instances, including this extract from an article on St Patrick's Day from the Barrier Miner in Broken Hill in 1890:

Fortunately in the freer atmosphere of Australia the Irishman is under no disabilities as compared with other folk. In this land the sinister meaning of the saying " No Irish need apply " is not understood.

Of course that's contradicted by the fact that there are plenty of examples of NINA on Trove, in employment ads from the 1840s all the way up to 1916 - and some instances in other ads, such as young gentlemen wishing to correspond with young ladies, provided they are not Irish. There are also plenty of instances of people accusing others of using it in ads, or denying that they used it themselves. For example, this from The Colonist, Sydney, Wed 8 Jan 1840:

"No Irish Need Apply"
The Sons and Daughters of Hibernia are most respectfully informed that the above was not written by Mr or Mrs Dunsdon; but by Major Christie, of Carter's Barracks, for a Servant for him.
THOMAS DUNSDON.

Plenty of references to the song too, as well as comedies and skits, and letters to the editor and opinion pieces about the phrase. It was clearly in common enough use that it was well-recognised.
posted by andraste at 4:11 PM on July 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Professor Jensen strikes back. I told you he was a little unhinged.

He also makes a guest appearance in the comments here.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:01 PM on August 15, 2015