The Words of the Prophets are Erased from the Tenement Halls

 

I am horrified to learn what has happened to the Tenement Museum in New York.

I saw it perhaps 12 or 15 years ago, and it was a high point of the trip. Although I can claim no personal ties to that history, I grew up to my Irish grandmother’s rendition of “The Sidewalks of New York.” It was a kind of anthem to North American Irish. We looked to New York as a kind of ethnic capital, since there was little left to us back in Ireland.

Growing up, there were still areas of Montreal and Kingston, too, that we were told never to go to as kids. They were the tenements our Irish ancestors had inhabited. We were still to insecure in our status to be comfortable about them. Be seen there, and we might easily be taken for “that kind” of Irish. Goose Village, Griffintown, Point St. Charles. In Kingston, the entire north quadrant was as if roped off. In Toronto, it was Cabbagetown, Corktown, St. James Town.

I have been warned on several occasions, by women, almost on first meeting, that their mothers had made them promise never to become involved with anyone Irish. In college, the student newspaper once published an opi9nion piece titled “Let’s sink Ireland for a Day.”

The historic discrimination against the Irish, or the Jews, or the Poles, has not abated; it is still common. It is the life experience of many now living; Jews are still the most common target of all hate crimes. Yet now we Irish, Jews, and Poles, are having our own history here erased while being falsely accused of being the “oppressors” of other groups with whom our ancestors rarely came in contact. Or when they did, met as equals and most often comrades at the bottom of the greased pole. 

I suspect it is just a continuation of the same discrimination; just a new excuse to discriminate against the Irish or the Jews, while using them as a scapegoat for the sins of others. Like scapegoating poor Scots-Irish “rednecks” in the South for supposed discrimination and slavery, when their own ancestors never owned slaves, and came as indentured servants, a kind of term-limited slavery, themselves.