Many freedmen after the US Civil War also adopted new surnames to separate themselves from slavery, adopting common last names or last names of white folk they were exposed to during the liberation of the South - including ~150,000 Irish-Americans who served in the Union Army. Furthermore, while Irish were considered white before the US Civil War, they were also ‘lower’ in social status, and intermarriages between white Irish and free Black folk were more common than with the white Anglo-American majority.
This isn’t to say “definitely not” for “Does a Black person with an Irish surname have a bad history behind that surname?” - there was a significant minority Irish-Americans amongst the slaver class in the US. But it’s also much less certain than the meme implies.
Also it wasn’t uncommon for black Americans and Irish Americans to marry, especially in new York. It was often Irish women marrying black men, but it wasn’t exclusively that way.
Correct, lots of Irish came over well after slavery and were treated like shit. This is more appropriate for black Americans with Anglican surnames (Williams, Smith, etc)
An African-American comedian who moved to Sweden did a similar routine about his Swedish wife being naively excited when his DNA test showed him to be 4% Scandinavian.
Reminds me of the
SNLKey and Peele skit where they made a commercial for those companies that use your DNA to find out about your background.Edit: Corrected a mistake.
It was Key and Peele. Great skit.
I’m related to Thomas Jefferson! 😄
I had ancestors come over on the Mayflower! (I’m brown)
Oops. Thank you for the correction.
So his great great great great great … great grand father was a viking who wanted to sail to america but landed in africa.
Im sorry if im being ignorant but why is this so bad?
Slave masters would give their surnames to the people they owned. Sometimes they raped their slaves.
Ah okay i was overthinking it
I have a friend (palest of white) who had a black person say my friend’s last name sounds black. Replying was a bit awkward.
I’m African American and my family’s last name was an interesting one because it is very German sounding but with a twist.
That’s when I learned that the reason for this was due to my ancestors being given that name by their…”new family”…but they didn’t want to give them the actual name so they put a twist on the spelling just slightly.
Apparently that was a thing with a lot of last names given by the “new family”.
Example: Villiams is the slaver’s last name so the slave gets the last name Williams. Close enough to be recognized, but not enough to note equality.
During human races ideology time, Iris were seen as “white blacks” (actually “white n…”) right?
Have they got white priviledges before the end of that ideology?
When I was a kid, I used to watch the Mike Douglas Show (I’m old). One time, he had a guy on who supposedly discovered the family coat of arms for people. The guy brought framed coats of arms for everyone on the show, including not just Douglas but also a black vocalist (I think it might have been Shirley Bassey). I was like all of 12, but even I knew how awkward that was. I guess I’m saying it seems more people don’t know than do.
Is this meme trying to break class solidarity?
More trying to emphasize that a bit of sensitivity and context are not amiss when dealing with the issue of the history of surnames and Black Americans, which is not a bad thing at all.
Think of it more as an encouragement to intersectionality.
How does this help intersectionality? I don’t quite get that. It seems, to me, to imply that black people with Irish surnames are supposed to assume they have them because of slavery. As pointed out elsewhere in the comments, though that is true and has happened, it’s not all instances.
To me, something intersectional would be highlighting both these groups have faced historical racism rather than, what to me ses like, trying to highlight something potentially negative one of these did to the other without bringing a bunch of receipts. 🤷♂️
