In Saint John, New Brunswick—one of the two mill towns I grew up in*—there is an historic courthouse. The main reason for visiting it is a self-supporting spiral staircase. Once you have marveled at that, there are a few historic exhibits.
One of the historic displays is a book with the arrest records from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth and early twentieth century. If you flip to any page from the last half of the nineteenth century forward, a curious fact will become obvious: for any given period there were many more Irish Catholics arrested than any other group. The number arrested far exceeds their proportion of the population of Saint John.
Some of this can be explained by bigotry. But in Saint John, as we find in most eastern cities, the police force became a route out of poverty for Irish Catholics and by middle of the twentieth century the majority of police officers in town were Irish Catholics and yet the majority of people arrested, charged and convicted of crimes remained Irish Catholics for as long as records were kept. Some other group has probably supplanted them at the top of this particularly hit parade by now but records are no longer kept to ascertain this. I'd guess that Irish Catholics were still at the top of the charts in the early 1970s when my family moved away.
The point being that while there was unquestionably discrimination against Irish Catholics when the city government and business was dominated by WASPs, there was also something seriously amiss with the Irish Catholic subculture that those fleeing the potato famine brought to eastern North America. And we can see evidence of this in all the major cities of the east coast where the Irish Catholics played a disproportionate part in crime, violent crime, criminal gangs and organized crime. The law had a disproportionate effect on the Irish Catholics of Saint John partly because of discrimination but also partly because the Irish Catholics were simply more likely to be criminals. Even if the law had been administered perfectly neutrally, there would have been more Irish Catholics arrested.
The same remains true for some of the minority subcultures today.
In Saint John, things began to improve when members of a nascent Irish Catholic middle class took a long hard look at the subculture that they were raised in and began to be critical of it. They used their position of influence in Irish-Catholic institutions to change attitudes. My godfather spearheaded the movement to merge the Catholic Youth Organization or CYO with the larger YMCA because he believed that the isolationist attitudes promoted by the CYO were hurting young Irish Catholics who would benefit from more exposure to the more successful moral culture promoted at the YMCA.
Yes, there remains racism in North America, but one of the primary obstacles confronting young black, Hispanic and aboriginal youth (among others) are the pathologies of their own subcultures.
* the other being Gatineau, Quebec
One of the historic displays is a book with the arrest records from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth and early twentieth century. If you flip to any page from the last half of the nineteenth century forward, a curious fact will become obvious: for any given period there were many more Irish Catholics arrested than any other group. The number arrested far exceeds their proportion of the population of Saint John.
Some of this can be explained by bigotry. But in Saint John, as we find in most eastern cities, the police force became a route out of poverty for Irish Catholics and by middle of the twentieth century the majority of police officers in town were Irish Catholics and yet the majority of people arrested, charged and convicted of crimes remained Irish Catholics for as long as records were kept. Some other group has probably supplanted them at the top of this particularly hit parade by now but records are no longer kept to ascertain this. I'd guess that Irish Catholics were still at the top of the charts in the early 1970s when my family moved away.
The point being that while there was unquestionably discrimination against Irish Catholics when the city government and business was dominated by WASPs, there was also something seriously amiss with the Irish Catholic subculture that those fleeing the potato famine brought to eastern North America. And we can see evidence of this in all the major cities of the east coast where the Irish Catholics played a disproportionate part in crime, violent crime, criminal gangs and organized crime. The law had a disproportionate effect on the Irish Catholics of Saint John partly because of discrimination but also partly because the Irish Catholics were simply more likely to be criminals. Even if the law had been administered perfectly neutrally, there would have been more Irish Catholics arrested.
The same remains true for some of the minority subcultures today.
In Saint John, things began to improve when members of a nascent Irish Catholic middle class took a long hard look at the subculture that they were raised in and began to be critical of it. They used their position of influence in Irish-Catholic institutions to change attitudes. My godfather spearheaded the movement to merge the Catholic Youth Organization or CYO with the larger YMCA because he believed that the isolationist attitudes promoted by the CYO were hurting young Irish Catholics who would benefit from more exposure to the more successful moral culture promoted at the YMCA.
Yes, there remains racism in North America, but one of the primary obstacles confronting young black, Hispanic and aboriginal youth (among others) are the pathologies of their own subcultures.
* the other being Gatineau, Quebec
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