“I am half Irish, the rest of my blood being watered
down with German and Massachusetts English. But Irish blood doesn't water down
very well; the strain must be very strong.”—American novelist and Nobel
Literature laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968), “I Go Back to Ireland,” Collier’s, Jan. 31, 1953, collected in Americaand Americans and Selected Nonfiction, edited by Susan Shillinglaw and
Jackson J. Benson (2002)
I don’t think I can wish my readers a “happy” St.
Patrick’s Day—there will surely be no marching or celebrating this year. But in
the 1840s, when they first came to this country, they didn’t have much to cheer
about, either, what with a famine that turned into a plague in their home
country and bigotry that awaited them when they came to these shores in
absolute desperation.
How did they endure it? Faith, humor, sheer will—and
uniting together, as tight as can be, when they were rejected by native Americans who could have acted more
tolerantly and generously but didn’t.
I worry that the current Coronavirus crisis will not
only continue to split Americans into warring groups, but that it may even
fracture the solidarity of groups yearning to break through, as the Irish were,
after long years, finally able to manage. We must not let this happen.
Let’s hope that the ethnic solidarity celebrated by
Steinbeck remains just as strong not only within Irish-American, but among
those who have taken their place as emerging groups in America. It may be now,
as it was then, the only to survive.
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