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3 Identity, Consciousness, Solidarity, and Culture Irish Catholics and African Americans The classic weapon of the ethnic oppressed is solidarity, derived from consciousness of one’s identity and the need to organize on that basis to survive in a hostile environment. Individuals in solidarity groups think in terms of the effects of societal decisions on the group and feel they are in some ways personally affected by what happens to the group.1 This solidarity is always accompanied by some consciousness of another group—defined as ethnic—as adversarial or hostile. Real or imagined cultural differences also distinguish the groups. Depending on the extent of cultural differences, the extent of oppression, or both, solidarity groups exhibit varying levels of “institutional completeness.”2 Finally, ethnic solidarity groups establish boundaries—social, cultural, and political—that, if individuals cross, they face isolation, marginalization, and contempt. This boundary maintenance function is often viewed as essential to the maintenance of the group’s ethnicity. Each of the foregoing aspects of solidarity groups has marked the experience of the Catholic Irish and African Americans in varying degrees depending on historical time and place. In other words, the ethnic politics of the two groups has been a function of the particularities of their subordination at various times and places in the United States. It is also a function of the relative populations of the two groups in relationship to Anglo‑Saxons and whites. Catholic Irish solidarity, for example, may have been stronger in Boston and New England, whereas black solidarity may have been most attenuated in that city and region. In his classic analysis of nineteenth‑century Boston, Handlin writes, “only the Negroes developed a group consciousness comparable to that of the Irish.”3 However, he pointed out that black ethnic consciousness was more contingent and ambivalent than the Catholic Irish because 25 26 Chapter 3 black ethnicity derived not from cultural differences they desired to maintain, but from racial segregation and exclusion they desired to abolish. Thus, for example, as soon as school segregation was prohibited in Boston African Americans closed their separate schools.4 This ambivalent black identity and skepticism about separate institutions in Boston characterized black ethnicity throughout the United States with the dominant integrationist black leadership opposing institutional completeness arguing it was a form of self‑segregation to be embraced only as a last resort. As Meier puts it, “On the one hand white hostility has led Negroes to regard the creation of their own institutions as either necessary or wise, on the other hand these institutions reinforced and perpetuated thinking favorable to group separatism.”5 No such ambivalence marked Catholic Irish ethnicity in Boston. They embraced ethnic identity because of Anglo‑Saxon hostility but also because they wished in nineteenth‑century Boston and elsewhere to preserve their cultural heritage. At the core of this heritage was Catholicism. Excluded from participation in many aspects of secular life in Boston and unwilling to participate in its religious life, the Catholic Irish, unlike the blacks, eagerly embraced institutional completeness in an effort to “erect a society within a society.”6 Unlike African Americans, many Catholic Irish immigrants considered integration with Protestants a betrayal, an unforgiveable breach of ethnic boundaries. As the Boston Pilot, the city’s leading Catholic Irish newspaper assessed, in words that echo Elijah Muhammad in the 1960s, “cooperation for any length of time in important matters between true Catholics and real protestants is morally impossible . . . tantamount to loss of faith.”7 African Americans and Irish Catholics have displayed relatively high degrees of ethnic identity and consciousness. The two groups also exhibit other similarities, including placing high value on religion, the church, and clergy. Both groups have also exhibited a proclivity for politics, especially urban politics. An emphasis on oratory has also been an important feature of their political cultures, and each group has exhibited a tendency toward “centrifugalism” or tensions between the “bourgeoisie” and the “folk.”8 As oppressed peoples the Irish Catholics and the blacks turned to the “solace of religion.” Holden describes faith, the belief that “God will deliver us some day” as the single most common theme in African American culture.9 Wittke describes the Catholic Irish as “a people of the parish” who in the midst of poverty and oppression could always rely on the “solace of religion.”10 Since both groups were for a time excluded from mainstream political processes and leadership positions, the church [3.145.178.240] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07:20 GMT...

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