Takaki ch 6

In Takaki’s chapter entitled Emigrants from Erin: Ethnicity and Class within White America he discusses the hardships the Irish endured. In Ireland there was a deadly disease for potatoes that took Ireland’s cash crop out of existent. In order to stay alive the Irish were forced to immigrate. At the beginning of 1855 around one million people had died from the famine due to lack of food and disease. The “Market Revolution” in America attracted these Irishmen to come join the work force in the states.
The Irish were regarded in America as a great working class group of people. They were compared to Chinese and were put into competition against them in order to increase production. The Chinese were set as role models for the Irish community but the Irish did much more than hard laborers. The Irish were responsible for building one of the most important waterways in New York’s Erie Canal. The Irish were used by those in power to work on many of the needed industrial era. Much like the Chinese and other immigrating ethnicities.
When the Irish were forced out of their homeland, which was plagued with a potatoes famine, they entered America as another ethnicity that would strive to be successful in America. Like the other incoming races, religions, and ethnicities America had seen in this era, the Irish were taken advantage of by the privilege whites. During this time the Chinese was being used to complete railroads, which whites had them doing through putting Chinese into competition with other races and countries such as Japan, Korea, and Puerto Rico? When The Irish entered American they were pinned against the Chinese, who were whites wished them to see as a role model. This resulted in the hard work of a group of people and gave the privilege what they wanted, whites as upper class and minorities working for them.
So why did whites use their privilege to make groups like he Irish into a working class. They did this in order to keep their status as "privileged" and keep any threatening races working for them. Whites were able to make money on the hard work of the Irish just like they did with the Chinese. When whites used their privilege to make the Chinese work for them they had great success, explaining why they chose to repeat this action. By taking advantage of minorities, privilege whites became richer and gained more power, and each time a new minority entered Americas working force whites had another chance to do just that. By putting different minorities against each other whites were able to keep their privilege, which still exists to this day.