John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Andrew Greeley, That Most Distressful Nation: The Taming of the American Irish (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972), p. 121. 2. Ibid., p. 123. 3. Daniel Levine, The Irish and Irish Politicians (Notre Dame, IN: Uni‑ versity of Notre Dame Press, 1966), p. x. 4. Daniel P. Moynihan, “Forward” to That Most Distressful Nation, p. xvi. 5. Robert C. Smith, We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post–Civil Rights Era (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), p. 279. 6. Michael Dawson explores this idea of this strong tie with the concept of “linked fate.” See Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 71–88. 7. See Caroline Kennedy, “A President Like My Father,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 2008; and Jeff Zeleny “Kennedy Calls Obama New Generation of Leadership,” New York Times, Jan. 28, 2008. 8. See as examples, Greeley, That Most Distressful Nation; Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963, 1970); Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Steven Erie, “Two Faces of Ethnic Power: Comparing the Irish and Black Experience,” Polity 13 (1980): 261–84; Michael Hecter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536– 1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many‑Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, vol. 1 (London: Verso, 1994); and Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish became White (New York: Routledge, 1995). For an in‑depth examination of the relationship generally between Catholics and blacks in twentieth‑century American cities including Boston and Chicago, see John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century Urban North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Finally, for a brief comparison specifically of the Kennedy and Obama 191 192 Notes to Chapter 1 elections focusing on religion and race, see Randall Kennedy, The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (New York: Pantheon, 2011), pp. 125–32. 9. Moynihan, “Forward,” p. xi. 10. Greeley, That Most Distressful Nation, p. 41. 11. Thomas O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History (Boston: Northwestern University Press, 1995), p. x. Chapter 1. Understanding Ethnicity and Ethnic Incorporation in the United States 1. Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 9. 2. Ibid, p. 270. 3. Joseph Curran, Hibernian Green on the Silver Screen: The Irish and American Movies (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 2. On the incorpo‑ ration of the Scotch‑Irish during the early years of the Republic, see Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), pp. 6–12. 4. Ibid. See also Frederick Wittke, The Irish in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), pp. vi, vii; and Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish became White (New York: Routledge, 1995). 5. Arthur Mitchell, JFK and His Irish Heritage (Dublin, Ireland: Moy‑ tura Press, 1993), p. 11. 6. Phillip Converse, “Religion and Politics: The 1960 Election,” in Elec‑ tions and the Political Order, ed. Angus Campbell et al. (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 104. 7. The persistence of Jewish solidarity or nationalism may be traced to religiosity, identification with Israel, and continuing although varying degrees of anti‑Semitism. We should note that since Kennedy’s election no Jew has been among the serious candidates for the presidential nomination of either major party and only one (Joe Lieberman in 2000) has been nominated for vice president. This is noteworthy because Jews are the most incorporated and politically engaged of all American ethnic groups. 8. Ignatiev, How the Irish became White, p. 112. 9. Matthew Holden Jr., The Politics of the Black Nation (New York: Chandler, 1973), pp. 209–10. 10. Wsevolod Isajiw, “Definitions of Ethnicity,” Ethnicity 1 (1944): 111–24. 11. Max Weber, “The Ethnic Group,” in Theories of Society, ed. Talcott Parsons (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1961), p. 212. 12. Robert Schermerhorn, Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 23. 13. See also in addition to Hechter James Nagel and Susan Olzak, “Eth‑ nic Mobilization in New and Old States: An Extension of the Competitive Model,” Social Problems 30 (1982): 127–43; and Robert C. Smith, “Sources of [3.22.70...