"The Atlantick Ocean," said Cotton Mather, "like a River of Lethe, may easily cause us to forget many of the things that happened on the other side."

I think genealogy is The Grand Subject for the human sciences, since no human being is without ancestors. We may know who they are or we may not, they may be easy to find or hard, but they are there. It's an ideal subject to study with students as well. If I were a millionaire one of the good works I'd fund would be a project to collect the family histories of assorted recent immigrant groups to the US, such as the Hmong from Southeast Asia, while the older generation is still alive who might remember the names of grandparents and great-grandparents. Imagine if we had such documentation for all the Puritan immigrants to New England in the 1630s -- what a treasure that would be.

RJO (with one branch of the family from "Leitrim, God help us")

For what it's worth, my great-great paternal grandparents emigrated from Annascaul, County Kerry to upstate New York during the mid-1860s. That doesn't sound like much. But I will never forget the day I finally found that out.

Did they land in any of the following towns?

Palmyra
Horseheads
Owego
Auburn
Rochester

Art,

This is eery! I don't know exactly where they landed, but do know that they lived in Wellsville, in Allegany County, along with scads of relatives and extended family, until their deaths well after World War I. So odds are they did land at one of these... Did your ancestors follow a similar route?

Just the potato famine refugees. Most of the Irish in my family tree were Protestants who landed in Appalachia (generations earlier).

As far as I know, none of my people passed through Wellsville, but they can be hard to trace with the census records. Wellsville, Horseheads, and Owego are all small Southern Tier towns, though. (Horseheads is where my great-great grandfather did his apprenticeship, and Owego where he did business for a while).

You are certainly right about the fascinating history of Irish emigration to USA. Ireland is one of the few countries in the world whose population is now [i]smaller[/i] than it was 150 years ago - before the population of the island of Ireland was about 8 million (now about 5 million).

As an Irishman, I've certainly come across a lot of Americans who have come back to Ireland to find their roots. Most of them get in touch with distant relatives, come over and enjoy what the country has to offer, visit some of the museums and so on here. It's great to see them interested in their heritage, visiting the country and contributing to the economy.

I find it a little strange, though, when people whose ancestors left the country four generations ago begin to insist on an identity as 'Irish-American' or even 'Irish'. I watch St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Chicago or Boston - much bigger than anything they do here! - and really wonder what drives the passion behind it. I even know an enthusiastic Irish American who 'Gaelicised' his name and went from plain old James to Séamas. Fancy becoming Erin Ni Conchúr?

It wouldn't worry me so much if the people involved didn't tend to get involved in Irish politics. Organisations like Noraid continue to sponsor violence and terrorism in the country. Some Americans have had their eyes opened to Sinn Féin and Gerry Adams with his recent association with Fidel Castro, but many continue to believe the simplistic myth that the IRA were a bunch of hippy freedom fighters. Most people here (on both sides of the fence) were disillusioned about that long ago. I know not all self-professed 'Irish-Americans' have supported terrorism. Still, I can't help wondering what drives an American to answer me "I'm Irish too", when I ask them where they're from.

I guess I don't like identity politics in any form, and I think your nation would be rather more cohesive if you did away with all these hyphenated labels and concentrated on being 'American'. This doesn't mean a return to some great canon of white men, but rather encouragement for all American citizens to embrace all facets of what makes the United States. I always think, wouldn't it be great people in our universities studied areas not directly related to their own lives? "African-Americans" studying the Irish Famine, "Irish-Americans" studying Jewish philosophy, "Hispanic Americans" studying pre-colonial history, and "Jewish Americans" studying the Harlem Renaissance. Somehow I feel debates would become a lot more interesting and less predictable if something like that happened.

I've always wondered how much this Irish-American thing is driven by the need to take a victim identity in today's political climate. Is it more palatable to say that you're Irish-American rather than a plain old WASP? The difference between the two is probably minimal, anyway, seeing so many 'Irish-Americans' are actually descended from Scots-Irish Protestants. Their distant cousins back in Ulster would most likely baulk at the idea of them even calling themselves 'Irish'! I wonder to what extent the Irish-American identity has gained momentum as a response to people of every other ethnicity and origin being offered a simple narrative about their history and their place in American society.

On a brighter note, it's wonderful to find out your ancestors hail from County Kerry, one of the most beautiful spots in the country. Have you spent time over there? You really should. Take the umbrella though.

I find it a little strange, though, when people whose ancestors left the country four generations ago begin to insist on an identity as 'Irish-American' or even 'Irish'.

In some cases, that may be true. In others, that insistence has been continuous over those four generations.

I watch St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Chicago or Boston - much bigger than anything they do here! - and really wonder what drives the passion behind it. I even know an enthusiastic Irish American who 'Gaelicised' his name and went from plain old James to Séamas. Fancy becoming Erin Ni Conchúr?

Was it not a project of Eamonn de Valera to revive the Gaelic language? He was Taoiseach of Ireland, not the Mayor of Chicago.

It wouldn't worry me so much if the people involved didn't tend to get involved in Irish politics. Organisations like Noraid continue to sponsor violence and terrorism in the country. Some Americans have had their eyes opened to Sinn Féin and Gerry Adams with his recent association with Fidel Castro, but many continue to believe the simplistic myth that the IRA were a bunch of hippy freedom fighters. Most people here (on both sides of the fence) were disillusioned about that long ago. I know not all self-professed 'Irish-Americans' have supported terrorism. Still, I can't help wondering what drives an American to answer me "I'm Irish too", when I ask them where they're from.

I think you will find that people who make political contributions of any kind are (within most ethnic groups hereabouts) less than 4% of the total.

I've always wondered how much this Irish-American thing is driven by the need to take a victim identity in today's political climate. Is it more palatable to say that you're Irish-American rather than a plain old WASP?

It may be in certain circumstances. Please note that people who claim the label "Irish" are commonly predominantly Celtic in their ancestry and Catholic in their confessional allegiance, so the term "WASP" is inaccurate. Ditto the Scotch-Irish: though Presbyterian, their ancestors were from Ulster, not East Anglia.

It might also be noted that the term "WASP" has a vaguely pejorative connotation in this country: indicative not of an ethnos but of a sort of baseline of manners and background, and one lacking in style or spirit.

The difference between the two is probably minimal,

That may be in most cases nowadays. I think it likely that has only been true as a rule since about 1962, as a consequence of the implosion of the Catholic Church in the United States as a distinct and psychologically encompassing subculture.

anyway, seeing so many 'Irish-Americans' are actually descended from Scots-Irish Protestants. Their distant cousins back in Ulster would most likely baulk at the idea of them even calling themselves 'Irish'!

The Scotch-Irish heartland is Appalachia, and people of that description seldom have a vigorous sense of themselves as an ethnos (though they might be quite interested in family history & cultural artifacts). The St. Patrick's Day parades and NORAID fund drives are a phenomenon among urban Catholic Irish and have no connection to Mr. MacKellar of Johnson City, Tennessee.

_____

A side note to Dr. O'Connor:

My interest was piqued when you mentioned Upstate New York, which is where my people landed. I inadvertantly left the impression my people came from your village in County Kerry. As far as I have been told, we are from County Cork.

Thanks for your interesting reply, Art.

It's interesting that you say less than 4% of self-professed Irish Americans are interested in the political situation. I guess it's a case of those who shout loudest being heard, because back here in the old country we always seem to hear one-sided views from across the Atlantic.
Irish-Americans are often surprised about why the native Irish roll their eyes when they start to talk about how they've been learning Gaelic or whatever. I know that there is not necessarily any political implication that follows from one being interested in Gaelic, but it simply comes from the experience of hearing rabid extremists.

I visit a few message boards devoted to Irish politics on the Internet, and there are always a few Americans. With a few honorable exceptions, they are typically more extreme in their Irish Republicanism than any of the native Irish.

The idea of 'Celtic' ancestry that you refer to in itself is a myth, as there is no significant differences between DNA within the British Isles. ('WASP' in itself is a myth too, the Angles and Saxons didn't even particularly like each other!) 'Celtic' is a name given retrospectively to a group of distinct, but related, cultures and languages.

Those that you term 'Scotch-Irish' as likely to be Anglican as Presbyterian and although the majority would be descended from Scots, many would have connections with East Anglia too! It's interesting that the term 'Scotch-Irish' is never used here in Ireland, they call themselves 'Ulster-Scots'. Labels can say a lot: it's fashionable to be 'Irish' in the USA, but the Ulster Protestants want nothing to do with it!

I always presumed that it would be Catholic Irish-Americans who were supportive of NORAID and the Republican cause, but I must say that I've come across a few Protestant Irish-Americans who are very strong sympathisers of Sinn Fein.

For exampe, a while ago I saw a message on an Irish Methodist forum from the USA. An American lady said that she had recently learnt that she was descended from Irish Methodists. She was excited to learn more about this, and was particularly interested in whether her Methodist ancestors might have been involved in the Republican struggle. Needless to say, the response that she got was less than sympathetic! ;)

With this in mind, I wonder if the difference between Mr MacKeller of Johnson City and Mr O'Malley of Boston are as clear-cut as you say. You might be well-informed about it, but does it really exist as a distinction? I ask only because I have met with startling ignorance from many, many Americans about this issue.* The Methodist thing above seems illustrative of a much broader trend. For example, I hear people talk frequently about how many 'Irish-American' presidents you've had. Most of these are actually partially or fully of Ulster-Scots descent: Jackson, T Roosevelt, Wilson, Reagan and Clinton. But maybe you're right. I'd be interested in reading up more about the Ulster-Scots identity.

It's also interesting how you say 'WASP' has become indicative of a certain set of cultural attitudes rather than an ethnic-religious position. It's not a term we use here at all, so I'm not really familiar with that idea. I do find it mildly disturbing that a descriptively ethnic term has become an insult, in much the same way that it is disturbing (but true) that 'gay' has come to mean 'stupid'.

*This is not meant as a slight against your country, which has produced many wonderful things.

It's interesting that you say less than 4% of self-professed Irish Americans are interested in the political situation.

Actually, I was making a general point about levels of political engagement in this country, which I do not believe are more than weekly correllated with ethnic identification. As a rule, about a quarter of the population follow public affairs as a matter of routine. Those that are 'active' in politics - making monetary contributions, volunteering for campaigns, sitting on party committees &c. are generally about 3% of the total. At one time, Catholic Irish in this country were known for a talent for building political machines, so may have had higher rates of participation. A remnant of that survives in Chicago, but nowhere else. Comparatively few people cut cheques to political campaigns, whether it be to Martin O'Malley's mayoral campaigns in Baltimore or to the Democratic National Committee or to some agency laundering money for Sinn Fein. There is a much larger corona of people who may fancy the Provisional IRA. I have to tell you the only ones I have ever met in the flesh were some Hibernians manning the table at International Folk Festival in Rochester in 1982.

Irish-Americans are often surprised about why the native Irish roll their eyes when they start to talk about how they've been learning Gaelic or whatever.

What's wrong with learning Gaelic?

The idea of 'Celtic' ancestry that you refer to in itself is a myth, as there is no significant differences between DNA within the British Isles. ('WASP' in itself is a myth too, the Angles and Saxons didn't even particularly like each other!) 'Celtic' is a name given retrospectively to a group of distinct, but related, cultures and languages.

I cannot say as I personally give a damn about anyone's haplogroup, but if it interests you, so be it. (And by the way, that which is modal in the British Isles is common in certain regions of Spain, so the distinction between Galicians and Irishmen must be a myth as well).

The Welsh, Scots, Irish, and Manx understand themselves as a people apart from the English; modern English replaced the Celtic vernaculars in these regions a thousand years after the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes ran the sub-Roman Britons off the reservation; and the elites and populace of each of these territories have had a not-uncomplicated relationship to their English rulers. One might make of this history any number of things. One cannot define it out of existence

Our moderatrix may wish to play the philologist and instruct us. If memory serves, the term 'WASP' was coined in the 1920s (or thereabouts) to describe a domestic cultural category. In my lifetime, it has always had a certain derisive aspect, and people who are Catholic Irish in this country would (barring the usual idiosyncratic exceptions) never use it to describe themselves, whether they were antagonistic to that subpopulation or not. Nor would they describe themselves as 'black', 'jewish', or 'italian'. It is a misnomer.

Those that you term 'Scotch-Irish' as likely to be Anglican as Presbyterian and although the majority would be descended from Scots, many would have connections with East Anglia too!

Everybody's ancestry is mixed. The populations which settled on the western frontier during the colonial period had a different point of origin than the remainder and (viewed in the aggregate) distinct features which differentiated them from other colonial populations.

It's interesting that the term 'Scotch-Irish' is never used here in Ireland, they call themselves 'Ulster-Scots'. Labels can say a lot: it's fashionable to be 'Irish' in the USA, but the Ulster Protestants want nothing to do with it!

I think the term "Scotch-Irish" originated in the 19th century or earlier, so it is a 'fashion' of some durability. Prior to about 1930, I do not think there was any cachet in being 'Irish' in this country, and the Appalachian population I doubt has ever been much admired by outsiders.

I always presumed that it would be Catholic Irish-Americans who were supportive of NORAID and the Republican cause, but I must say that I've come across a few Protestant Irish-Americans who are very strong sympathisers of Sinn Fein.

My brother has been known to make Irish republican noises, not because of any sense of ethnic affinity, but because he is part of a cultural minority that has no name but has certain reflexes. The British Army in Belfast, the IDF in Nablus, and Rudolph Giuliani in New York are all examples of folks who respond to human problems with discipline rather than 'therapy'. That bothers a certain sort of person

With this in mind, I wonder if the difference between Mr MacKeller of Johnson City and Mr O'Malley of Boston are as clear-cut as you say. You might be well-informed about it, but does it really exist as a distinction?.

Less than used to be the case, but yes.

Thank you for your response.

On Irish Gaelic

I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with learning Irish Gaelic. However, it is often associated with a narrow, romanticised nationalism here. Many of those apparently devoted to the cause of the Irish Gaelic language are driven by political/ideological rather than linguistic/cultural concerns. As James Joyce's hero Stephen Daedalus puts it to an Irish nationalist, "it seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it in Irish."

This political association is why Irish people will generally act with surprise or suspicion when you tell them you're learning Irish, or have adopted a Gaelic form of your name.

After all, the language of everyday life, culture, politics, business of contemporary Ireland is overwhelmingly English. The fact that coercion was used historically in order to build the society is not really the point; the fact is that modern-day Ireland is an English-speaking country. One would have great difficulty attempting to understand Ireland or even get by in everyday life without a fluent command of English. Indeed, there is a strong argument to say that the money that is poured into the maintenance of Irish Gaelic by the government is not well spent. Firstly, because language death is a natural process that cannot be interrupted. Secondly, because native Irish speakers are being co-opted as political pawns, i.e. they are having a romanticised identity thrust upon them by the state. If you're interested, there's a book by Reg Hindley called 'The Death of the Irish Language' that deals with these issues.

On the peoples of the British Isles

Certainly the claims of Scottish, Welsh and Irish to be different from the English cannot be ignored. However, there are those, again with a political agenda, who over-emphasise the importance of difference at the expense of similarities. I'm not particularly interested in genetics either, but I brought up the point in order to counter the claim often made by Scottish/Irish/Welsh separatists that there is a genetic difference between 'Celtic' and 'Anglo' peoples. The reality is that there is no such trend.

There is often an assumption to assume that current political boundaries reflect innate differences between peoples. In fact, a good part of modern Wales was part of England until the late 19th Century; the divided Ireland was created as late as 1921. There has been massive cultural exchange between all four 'countries' of the United Kingdom. Intermarriage and movement between the countries continue at a massive level (1 million Scots in England and 500,000 English in Scotland).

On the Irish-American identity

If you argue that the Irish-American identity is something more meaningful and long-lasting than what is politically fashionable, why do you think it has endured so strongly down the years? Large settler populations came from England, Germany and Scandinavia too. While there are those who continue to recognise and celebrate a German-American or Norwegian-American identity, Irish-American seems more prominent (perhaps alongside with Italian-American)? Is it largely the latter two groups constituted a larger religious minority? Did they tend to be more economically-deprived, than say, the descendants of Swedish immigrants?

The kind of fetishisation of the Irish-American identities always makes me chuckle. Here's John Travolta:

"The emotional, romantic, whimsical part of me is Irish. Spiritually, I probably feel more like an Irishman - that's where my heart is." He went on, "The feelings I have for food and dance is probably the Italian side of me. I have the sexuality of an Italian but I think the Irish are very sexy too. I grew up in an all-Irish neighbourhood and it was as sexual as anything.""

Let's try replacing that two other settler populations and see if it still sounds plausible:

"The emotional, romantic, whimsical part of me is English. Spiritually, I probably feel more like an Englishman - that's where my heart is." He went on, "The feelings I have for food and dance is probably the Danish side of me. I have the sexuality of an Dane but I think the English are very sexy too. I grew up in an all-Danish neighbourhood and it was as sexual as anything.""

I'm not trying to provoke, just very curious about the whole thing because it still mystifies me somewhat.

...language death is a natural process that cannot be interrupted.

It is a social process dependant upon contingencies. Also, it might come as a surprise to residents of Israel chuffering in Hebrew all day that language death cannot be 'interrupted'.

If you argue that the Irish-American identity is something more meaningful and long-lasting than what is politically fashionable, why do you think it has endured so strongly down the years? Large settler populations came from England, Germany and Scandinavia too. While there are those who continue to recognise and celebrate a German-American or Norwegian-American identity, Irish-American seems more prominent (perhaps alongside with Italian-American)? Is it largely the latter two groups constituted a larger religious minority? Did they tend to be more economically-deprived, than say, the descendants of Swedish immigrants?

I cannot say. Andrew Greeley might be the foremost authority on the configurative profile of ethnic Irish in the United States. There is indubitably a considerable swatch of academic literature in sociology, social psychology, and anthropology that might address these questions. However, a good deal of it is likely to be suspect because this subject has implications for contentious topical questions. Fr./Prof. Greeley's work is likewise properly read skeptically, but for reasons more particular to who he is. I might suggest lines of inquiry.

One is that Irish, Scandinavian, German, and Italian migrations to the United States had very different dynamics, compositions, and destinations. It is a general rule that immigrant populations have a more 'entrepreneurial' bent than home-country or native host-country populations, and this is a conduit for their economic advancement and assimilation in the host country. I suspect this was less true in the Catholic Irish stream as it was (in the first instance) a proportionately huge cavalcade fleeing from an agricultural and economic disaster - as much refugees as immigrants. You had this mass of peasants entering wage employment and carrying with them proportionatly more social pathology and certain alien life-ways. At the same time, they had the skill to dominate certain aspects of the emerging urban political economy. If I am not mistaken, the contemporaneous German and Scandinavian streams headed to the rural Midwest, were predominantly Protestant, and were not good foot soldiers for the Tweed ring. I do not think the antagonism and counter-antagonism between old-stock Americans and Catholic Irish immigrants has much of an analogue with regard to Scandinavian or German populations, for these reasons. The Catholic Irish (I think) carried with them a set of confessional and national/ethnic resentments that could be incorporated into an antagonistic regard for the extant old-stock American population. The Germans and Scandinavians I do not think had this baggage.

A second is that Italians and Irish both lived within the remarkable social and psychological edifice that was the Catholic Church in North America - Churches; schools at every level; voluntary associations of every kind; and a mundane piety which set them decisively apart from their non-Catholic neighbors. The Catholic Church lost its mojo very abruptly in 1962/65, and all that fell into ruins, but it has only been gone for about a generation.

A third is that World War I was traumatic for ethnic German populations in the United States and at that time many found it expedient not to cultivate a sense of distinction between themselves and the general population - up to and including changing their surnames.

I would not take John Travolta terribly seriously. There are two things you neglect. One is that with regard to sundry behavioral and dispositional variables, there are differences in means and standard deviations between ethnic groups that exceed those within ethnic groups. The other is that certain characteristics are in the popular mind with certain ethnic groups. Statements such as Travolta's assume, I think, that the audience shares the sense of associations that the speaker has. Substituting randomly selected ethnic groups for Travolta's will likely generate a statement that is non sequitur because the selected characteristics reflect neither popular prejudice or sociological reality.

Thank you for your comments. The reasons why Irish identity might have persisted (Catholic Church and its institutions, social and economic reasons) are largely what I suspected, but I have never known enough about it to articulate it in the way that you did. I'll definitely check out Greeley.

The case of Hebrew as language revival (resurrection?) is very interesting indeed, and it's interesting you brought it up. However, I would suggest that it is an exceptional case (perhaps the only successful example of language revival in the world) and something not likely to be repeated in Ireland. The reasons are obvious when you think about it: Hebrew was born along with a brand-new nation state that needed a common language. There was no other obvious choice for a Jewish diaspora population arriving from all over the world - some common language was required. There are also deep religious and cultural attachments to Hebrew within the Jewish/Israeli community: the Bible / Talmud / Zohar and other religious books, and well as early Jewish philosophy is written in Hebrew. Irish people simply do not have the same attachment to Gaelic. Their cultural milieu does include a small number of Gaelic sources, but many more Anglo and European sources. And of course there is no religious connection as the documents the Catholic Church are not particularly associated with the Irish language.

A better parallel to Irish would be the other Celtic languages, including Breton in France. These have made some slow progress in recovering in the past years, but the language of Scotland, Wales, or Brittany is still overwhelmingly English or French.

As for Travolta, of course I do not regard him as a spokesperson on identity. But as you say, what he said reflects the views about Irish and Italian cultures in the American mainstream. I appreciate that some perceived differences may reflect underlying sociological realities. However, I think it's disturbingly simplistic to say that one culture is more 'sexual' than another (and sounds suspiciously like the rhetoric of the colonialists coming back to haunt it!)

Surely this is the allure of stereotypes speaking, not any kind of profound truth about the Irish? I only wish the wet, staid, repressed Irish neighourhood in which I grew up had been "as sexual as anything" ;)

Cultural debates aside, have you been over to County Cork to see us? And did you like it?

I have just looked at one of Greeley's articles on his website about the Northern Ireland peace process and see that he is pedalling exactly the kind of misinformed rubbish about Irish Republicanism that I indicated in my previous posts.

http://www.agreeley.com/articles/040607.html

I really hope you don't need me to point out where the factual errors, prejudice and downright lies in this so-called 'journalism' are.

Thanks to you both for the lively exchange. So much of the history of Irish ancestry in the U.S. is the history of shifting perceptions about what it means to be Irish, and so much of that has to do with a nostalgic forgetfulness about Irish history itself. Add to that American wealth, and you have a long history of Americans helping fund Irish terror organizations as well as a more recent history of Americans pouring money into the country in exchange for a superficial "tour" of their roots.

My own interest in Irish history and genealogy emerges less from cultural nostalgia and sentimental stereotyping--my family's sense of "Irishness" is nil, and our ties with Catholicism died with my devout great grandfather--than it does from personal relationships that have brought me into close contact with Ireland and Irish people. I spend several months each year in Donegal, and have done so for several years; immersion in the rural culture of a border county has led me to study Irish history; relationships developed with people whose families have lived in that region for generations have enabled me to get beneath the romantic glossy surface Ireland offers to tourists eager to see that as substance. That in turn led me to realize that my own family's Irish history had been lost--perhaps wilfully. And that led me to attempt to reconstruct it, something I had to do from scratch as not one actual fact had been passed down to me, although some stories that proved to be inaccurate had.

Also of note: The manner in which this thread mirrors the longstanding tension (perhaps tension is too strong a word) between Irish people and Americans of Irish descent. Obviously there are close historical ties there, and there is a huge amount of economic and cultural crossover (I am always amazed by how many American TV shows you can watch on RTE). But there is something else, too. Last summer, I met an estate agent in Letterkenny. Upon learning my name, he looked at me hard and then informed me that the people I see around me in Ireland would be the ones who stayed and survived. There was a twinkle in his eye--but he was also making a comment about the characters of Irish emigrants to America, and perhaps also about their descendants.

I adore Donegal. My family has a caravan on the north coast, near Dunfanaghy. I spent many summers there as a child and still like to go when I get the chance.

The landscapes, the might of the Atlantic, the taste of the sea air, the stillness of the night... there's nowhere like the Donegal coast. :)

Cultural debates aside, have you been over to County Cork to see us? And did you like it?

Sorry. Never been there.

...and so much of that has to do with a nostalgic forgetfulness about Irish history itself.

I would suggest that reconstructions of the past can function as weapons in a present-day kulterkampf, and that past will be painted in colors (bright or dark) that serve the interests of the portraitist. I have occasion every once in a while to hear people who lived through the 1950s in the United States assenting to statements about the era that cannot be squared with historical statistics. Cultural propaganda can be very effective. (I believe Mary Kenney has made this point about much contemporary discussion in Ireland about its recent past).

The thoughtful and lively exchange evident in these pages vis-a-vis what it "means" to be Irish has been entertaining. This is a subject that has provoked a great deal of comment over the years, and as Ireland increasingly becomes a diverse society, with immigrants raising Irish-born children with Polish and Brazilian and Chinese ancestors, it will likely stir more interest. All for the best, I say.
Most Americans of Irish descent, or of any background, give very little real thought to the historical events that led to a decision that someone made, many years ago, to come here. That is true of all Americans, I believe. They know that their ancestors came here, and they know vaguely that it was for economic opportunity, or perhaps political freedom, or maybe just to get away from someone or something that was causing a problem. Most could not tell you what was happening in Ireland in 1847, or Italy in 1887, or Russia or China or wherever, other than "it was bad, so they left". By the same token, events in Ireland, especially lately, would give strong evidence that Irish people themselves know not a lot and perhaps care even less about aspects of their heritage. A huge debate now rages about building a motorway through the Hill of Tara. Lady Gregory's estate was bulldozed years ago. The comment made by a poster here that Irish people "roll their eyes" when Americans say they're studying Irish seems to me to be yet more evidence of a lingering sense of shame that many have, perhaps so far under the surface that they don't even see it. "Why would anyone want to speak that language", they say. In the years leading up to and following the famine, the language became associated with poverty and backwardness, and that association seems to reamin for many. No one since Dev has seriously advocated scrapping English and establishing a nationwide gaeltachi, but at the same time to dismiss an ancient language with a vibrant and rich literary tradition makes about as much sense in saying that we shouldn't study Latin, or ancient Greek. There is a beauty in the language that appeals to many, some of whom have no Irish ancestry at all. Kuno Meyer, a German, did some of the best work around this subject many years ago, and never claimed any Celtic connection at all (though of course the Celts got up that far as well).
As far as the north goes, well, there has always been a line of demarcation in Ireland itself that is much more concrete than a line on a map. If many Americans see things simplistically (and many do), they are in company with a great many Irish people who until recently saw the north through their own set of blinders, and were prevented by laws originating IN IRELAND that prevented their hearing from parties close to the conflict. Thankfully, it seems as though better times have come to the north, and there is finally reason to hope.
Ireland is a fascinating place. One needn't be Irish to see that.
J Moran

I know this is an older post, but still thought it worth bringing to readers attention the jus sanguinis principle, and the entitlement to Irish citizenship or nationality.

If you have at least one irish-born grandparent, and providing you register in the Irish Foreign Births Register, you can under current law then pass on your citizenship or nationality entitlement to your future offspring.

There are many of Irish heritage around the world that rue the fact they cannot apply for Irish nationality as they are now 3rd generation, and their parents did not register before they were born.

Whilst we hope the rules may be changed, you may want to consider applying if you want to retain the option for your future children as well.