Perhaps an argument could be fashioned that the Irish should have been enslaved, and that was our mistake. My wife would not have been amused, however.
But to compare the fleeting discrimination against Irish with the enslavement of blacks, to say nothing of the many laws which forbade normal contacts between blacks and whites, suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. Irish were never forbidden from marrying English or French, or other whites. Perhaps that was a mistake ( ), but it didn't happen. There were no Irish anti-miscegenation laws. Furthermore, Blacks were treated like cattle; breeding at their master's orders; whipped, killed, and tortured. The only thing comparable, but not the same, is the holocaust.
You don't have to believe that anyone alive today is guilty of discrimination, though we know that not to be true. The question is how to remedy what was a very real injustice that has not been remedied. If you were confined to a room by someone for even one minute, you could sue and probably win a substantial amount of money. Blacks have never been paid reparations, or given anything more than token power, something which occurred for a few years during Reconstruction. By the turn of the century, all of those small gains by blacks had been lost. Even the American Indians have been given some token land and token jurisdictional freedoms, although the injustices suffered by the Indians at the hands of the settlers and U.S. government are legendary, and the payments inadequate. (For instance, the United States Government broke every treaty it made with the American Indians until about 1940.)
So, I view Affirmative Action as a form of ongoing reparations for the harms we caused blacks for 400 years. I see it as a small payment on a very large debt.
But to compare the fleeting discrimination against Irish with the enslavement of blacks, to say nothing of the many laws which forbade normal contacts between blacks and whites, suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. Irish were never forbidden from marrying English or French, or other whites. Perhaps that was a mistake ( ), but it didn't happen. There were no Irish anti-miscegenation laws. Furthermore, Blacks were treated like cattle; breeding at their master's orders; whipped, killed, and tortured. The only thing comparable, but not the same, is the holocaust.
You don't have to believe that anyone alive today is guilty of discrimination, though we know that not to be true. The question is how to remedy what was a very real injustice that has not been remedied. If you were confined to a room by someone for even one minute, you could sue and probably win a substantial amount of money. Blacks have never been paid reparations, or given anything more than token power, something which occurred for a few years during Reconstruction. By the turn of the century, all of those small gains by blacks had been lost. Even the American Indians have been given some token land and token jurisdictional freedoms, although the injustices suffered by the Indians at the hands of the settlers and U.S. government are legendary, and the payments inadequate. (For instance, the United States Government broke every treaty it made with the American Indians until about 1940.)
So, I view Affirmative Action as a form of ongoing reparations for the harms we caused blacks for 400 years. I see it as a small payment on a very large debt.