IRISHMEN AND AFRICANS

"The Irish people, warm-hearted , generous , and sympathizing with the oppressed everywhere, when they stand upon their own green island, are instantly taught , on arriving in this Christian country , to hate and despise the colored people. They are taught to believe that we eat the bread which of by right belongs to them. The cruel lie is told the Irish, that our adversity is essential to their prosperity. The Irish-American will find out his mistake one day . He will find that in assuming our avocation he has also assumed our degradation. But for the present we are sufferers. The old employments by which we have heretofore gained out livelihoods are gradually, and it may be inevitably, passing into other hands. Every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to make room for some newly arrived emigrants, whose hunger and color are thought to give them a title to especial favor. White men are becoming house servants, cooks, and stewards, common laborers, and flunkeys to our gentry , and for aught I see, they adjust themselves to their stations with becoming obsequiousness. This fact proves that if we cannot rise to the whites, the whites can fall to us ." P. 443, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, Appendix, "The Slavery Party," (May 1853), by Frederick Douglass (1994)