Ummm......O.K.
But, if the "American tribe" that takes over is the "American tribe" that predominates out here on the Pacific Northwest Left Coast, you're not gonna like it.
You might start missing the Italian American Tribe. ;-)
Posted on 10/05/2004 12:54:35 PM PDT by Pharmboy
Moynihan himself had supposedly grown up in Hell's Kitchen, and did well enough in the world to counter any talk of social Darwinism, but talk of the decline of Black families and the growth of the "underclass" gave rise to the question of whether there was a distinct Irish underclass, separate from the ordinary Irish working people, and what happened to it. How different were the toughs of the Five Points from the rest of the Irish? And what happened to the 19th century underclass? Are most of us descended from it, or from hardworking, but more respectable folk? Can we really separate out the destructive and self-destructive into a separate class? On the other hand, ought we to ignore the fact that criminals are quite different from other people and have different fates, even when they may have grown up in the same neighborhoods or families? Tough and uncomfortable questions.
As I said, I don't know what the answers are, but the Irish themselves have long distinguished between the middle-class "lace curtain" or privileged "cut glass" Irish and the less successful. The differences have a lot to do with individual choices and values, something with environment, and perhaps not so very much to do with genes or heredity. Someone should look further into the matter in a serious empirical way, but the "underclass" is a touchy subject, then or now.
Some people really like these analogies, so whether or not African-Americans are to more recent history what the Irish were to 19th century America, Michael Barone has suggested that the Latinos are the new Italians (hard-working and family-oriented), and the Asians the new Jews (studious and ambitious). It's certainly possible, but history doesn't usually repeat itself exactly, and some people have criticized his analogies. Also, too much talk about ethnicity does make the head spin and promote tribalism.
Many successful groups in America have had to disassociate themselves from a darker criminal side. You could see this among the 19th century Irish, though crime was less organized then, later with the Irish and Jews and Blacks, and now with more recent immigrant groups. A lot has to do with human nature, and crime seems to be one way new arrivals in the city react to the promise of wealth America holds out. When such groups object that most of their ranks are composed of honest, hard-working, and law-abiding people, they are usually right.
Politicians a century ago seem really to have been looking to win every vote, rather than cynically seeking to win some groups and write off others. Doubtless there were the cynical manipulators and wire-pullers behind the scenes, but they had the smarts to stay in the wings, and not get in the way of the candidates on the stage of public discourse. Today the analysts and spin doctors are almost the stars. Politicians today can woo everyone, but there's so much talk of key demographics and who's aiming to win over which group, that we don't take what candidates say at face value, but always look for a hidden agenda. We know, or think we know, which statements to roll our eyes at, and find little to trust in political speeches.
Taft's reputation seems to have benefitted from his sincerity. Since he didn't especially want the Presidency, people are more inclined to accept that he really believed what he said, or at least that he wasn't simply saying it for personal advantage, but out of civic-mindedness and public-spiritedness. Nor were their great unconscious drives behind his comments as was the case with Wilson, Roosevelt, and others. So even to some who disagree with the stances Taft took, he seems to look more like a Washington, and less like a partisan, ideologue, or self-seeker. Unfortunately, such people don't often rise to the top or if they do, don't stay there for long, since you can't take the "politics" out of government.
There's something sad about it, especially when there's so much talk of "diversity" in society today. There's a lot that's dishonest in that talk -- whether or not the deception is ill-meant. A diverse society usually has mechanisms at work underneath to make people more alike and bring them together. So yesterday's "diverse" institutions have to be kept alive with efforts that a down-sizing economy doesn't always want to make. Desires for success and assimilation and for stability and tradition come into conflict and, inevitably, something has to give way. So unless you can make a compelling case for separate Polish and Irish, German and Italian groups, they tend to get folded together into larger units.
But some people are quite angry about the closing of ethnic parishes, and the larger question of the fate of older ethnic communities. E. Michael Jones, originally from Philadelphia, has written about the effects of "urban renewal" on older Catholic ethnic communities in cities like Philadelphia and Boston. He is very angry and very much a partisan of old school Catholicism, and his book has gotten mixed reviews. Jones tends more to look for villains than for causes and for conspiracies than for solutions, and his paleocon view looks less impressive as time goes on, but his stuff may be worth a look, if a very skeptical one.
An interesting development over the past 15 years is that, due to mandatory minimum sentences and improved police tactics, much of the black male underclass has been put away in the prime of lives. Will the element of "natural selection" play out in the black community? A disproportianate number of the black population that goes to college and enters the white collar world is female, so that adds yet another complication.
BTW: Moynihan, who was born in Oklahoma, actually spent much of his life in Red Hook, East Harlem and Hells Kitchen. He even spent part of his high school years sleeping in abandoned buildings. A brilliant man, but a disappointment as a Senator. The greatest political act of his career was his defeat of Bella Abzug.
I have a MAJOR problem with Jones's work. I could cite study after study to refute his contentions, but the most concrete example is my own family.
My dad essentially grew up in a "Polish Village" in Newark, New Jersey. Everyone knew each other, everyone went to St. Casimir's and everyone was suspicious of outsiders. It was a self-contained community that never experienced a large influx of blacks, unlike the rest of Newark. There were never any large scale "urban renewal" projects in the nabe either. Nevertheless, my dad always told me that there was a consensus among him and his friends that they would NOT live in Newark when they grew up and they would NOT have the same dead end blue collar jobs as their parents. It was upward mobility, more so than "urban renewal" or "white flight" that caused the problems that Jones likes to discuss.
White flight typically occurred in areas where people were already leaving. The initial flight to the suburbs of the upwardly mobile after WWII caused many urban communities to "mature" and property values to decline. Since the younger generation of "white ethnics" had no desire to remain in their communities, the only strong demand for housing in such neighborhoods was from blacks and Latinos. This is what has happened in New York and much of the urban northeast in general.
Living in Philadelphia, I can say that Jones is absolutely on the mark as far as what happened here to make a 80% white Republican dominated city a 55% minority Democrat dominated city.
The Democrat City governments elected since the 1960's have purposefully attacked white ethnic neighborhoods with a variety of programs to drive out the inhabitants.
Most recently, under Rendell and Clinton starting in 1993-4, a full frontal attack was made on Overbrook Park, Oxford Circle, Juniata Park, Lower Mayfair, Northwood, and Crescentville, with the city encouraging Section 8 criminals and other assorted lowlifes to move in and purposefully working to undermine hiterto stable ethnic neighborhoods (mostly Republican neighborhoods too - surprise, surprise). Tactics like withdrawing Police Officers from precincts in these neighborhoods, encouraging no down payment/no closing cost realtors to attack the blocks, etc., etc.
Many people around here are very bitter about how this has all played out.
They were starting to dump section 8'ers in my Brooklyn nabe, but that had more to do with landlords who needed the income to offset the rent controlled apartments where you had 80 year old ladies paying $250 in rent for a place that they could get $1,000 from HUD for.
It wouldn't surprise me.
I think nationwide, Italians are 2nd(maybe 3rd) most numerous by blood. Only behind Germans (most numerous) and possibly Mexicans.
You are among friends on FreeRepublic. Feel free to use the term "Shanty Irish" that we all know and love to refer to the "less successful" from the Emerald Isle.
Democrat Philadlephia Councilman Rick Mariano used a real vicious slur to refer to the "Shanty Irish", calling the denizens of Kensington (Philadelphia's 31st Ward, amazingly depsite its extreme poverty and decay the most Republican inner city slum in the nation - roughly 40% of the voters are Republican) as "trailer-park Irish trash."
"Our Jews" vs the "New Crowd".
Check out the book "White Town USA," which describes life in Kensington and Fishtown in the 1960s, when blacks, Puerto Ricans and even an American Indian family were attacked by the locals when they attempted to move in.
Ummm......O.K.
But, if the "American tribe" that takes over is the "American tribe" that predominates out here on the Pacific Northwest Left Coast, you're not gonna like it.
You might start missing the Italian American Tribe. ;-)
Don't remind me. I moved from Brooklyn to Seattle back in May. I can't wait to leave.
That being said, I must say, Polybius, that your hometown of Miami has the most beautiful ladies in the country as of 2004.
The Italian-Irish rivalry in the Boston area is legendary. There's a story about Malden Irish and Italian cops fighting it out in a bar many years ago. The worst part is that they are all liberal Dems.
I am btw a very conservative Republican American of Italian descent. (To the right of Rush). Where I live in MO descendancy matters not thankfully.
The kids in Kensginton still beat the crap out of black kids who drop by without thinking about where they shouldn't be. A black kid was beat to death that way about 15 years ago there. There is absolutely no love lost there between the folks of Kensington and the blacks from 10 blocks west.
Of course, the feeling and beatings are mutual when kids from Kensington wander off the wrong way to the west. The son of the (Deputy?) Police Chief from Kensington was similarly beaten to a pulp by some blacks about 20 years ago.
From the gutters of Dublin and Belfast to the gutters of Southie.
Southie is about half Polish and Lit.
I haven't seen it, and it seems a bit too declarative for Taft. When Taft called the Payne tariff the "best ever" he violated his own rule against the superlative. If I find it, I'll let you know. He might have said it, for here's the context of Taft and the Jews:
After much agitation in Congress and in the press, Taft abrogated an old treaty with Russia regarding the rights of visiting American citizens over violations of it by Russia towards American-Russian jews (who were treated, or mistreated, as Russian jews by the anti-semite Duma and regime; Russia did not recognize emigration). Before acting on it, Taft worried that if he abrogated the treaty the U.S. would lose all power over influencing Russia regarding her treatment of American jews, and of any American. He thought it would curtail trade and backfire on the American jews in that they would end up with no protection at all. While considering it, he wrote his brother,
Now, you observe that there are some very clear but nice distinctions in this matter, all of which I think will be overlooked in the indignation of the Jews at Russia, and under the influence of the political power that they exercise in New York city and elsewhere throughtout the country. Just what is to be done we must await events to see.Taft and his ambassador to Russia tried to clarify things in a new treaty, and, I think, both sides refused to budge. So, in December of 1911, Taft abrogated the treaty (and the Senate soon after concurred). I haven't studied this carefully, but I do know that American jews hailed Taft as a modern Lincoln for the action. He spoke to Jewish groups and likely took their vote in 1912. Taft was no anti-semite, although if we looked hard we'd likely find one or two of the typical slurs for the period in either his or his wife's correspondence. In the early 20s he got into a spat with Henry Ford over the latter's anti-semitism. There's online a fascinating retelling of the Russian situation by Ford: Taft Once Tried to Resist Jews - and Failed. Ford, of course, said the jewish bankers and financial interests got the better of Taft, and he hinted that Taft's failure to be re-elected may have been because of it! If you're interested in this, I'll send the full text of Taft's explanation to his brother. It was a reasonable position, as was the outrage at Russia by the American Jews. Diplomacy failed, politics had its say, and Taft abrogated the treaty. They hailed him for it.
Taft very directly went after the various ethnic groups and their lobbies. When the 1912 Woodrow Wilson Symposium papers are up ( here -- only one paper is up so far), you may be wish to see a paper on Taft and the Chicago polish vote, as well as another on Taft and the Mormon vote.
As for history's view of Taft as sincere, this was not the attitude taken by the symposium. They very pointedly treated him as insincere and politically-motivated. The other actors, of course, were earnest, honest, and sincere... That is, if you spoke for the issues that are dear to modern PC-ness, you were sincere. If you spoke for and defended the Constitution and the courts, you were merely political. It was that inane.
Thanks, as ever, for your great analysis.
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