The Irish bifocal and American sport: Exploring racial formation in the Irish Diaspora

Introduction

Theodor Adorno (1983: 56) proposed that ‘if one were to summarize the most important trends of present-day culture, one could hardly find a more pregnant category than that of sports’. The ubiquitous presence of professional sport makes Adorno’s comments even more relevant today. A reciprocal relationship exists between the sports world and a number of social networks, as they each help to reproduce, and are themselves reproduced by, influential social institutions and relationships. This arrangement has created opportunities for academic research to examine modern sport through a variety of theoretical frameworks to better understand both sport and society. ¹

This article will conceptualize sport as a racial project, in which ‘the very category of race has been inhabited and (at times) transformed’, in an analysis of racial formation (Carrington, 2010: 176). It will provide a contrasting viewpoint to the study of how ‘the Irish’ became White (Ignatiev, 1995), as it highlights the journey many Irish Americans traveled as they became Black, and argues that ‘the Irish’, or the entirety of individuals with Irish heritage, did not become White. ² Furthermore, this approach does not apply a mirror to the experiences of the Irish under English colonialism to better understand the workings of racism in the United States (Allen, 1994). Rather, it seeks to employ an Irish bifocal through which the evolution of racial formations in the United States can be better understood. This bifocal can demonstrate the significance of racial formations as it views both sides of the color line that divided the Irish Diaspora and examines the repercussions of this separation. The participation of Irish Americans in sport will be used as a point of reference and departure to illustrate the social structures that have coordinated these developments.

Defining and dividing the Irish

An analysis of the transition of many Irish Americans into African Americans is an exercise that can illuminate many of the incongruities that exist within the unstable categories and definitions of race. The interpretation of this transformation does not imply that an Irish identity is a fixed starting point, as the tenuous connection between members of a nation has led some to define national identities as ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1991). The proposal of a homogeneous Irish identity, like that of any national identity, discards a collection of conflicts and contradictions. These sharp divisions reveal the absurdities of a universal national identity, which James Joyce (2008: 248) took aim at in Ulysses:

- But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse.

- Yes, says Bloom.

- What is it? says John Wyse.

- A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place.

- By God then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I’m a nation for I’m living in the same place for the past five years.

 - Or also living in different places.

 - That covers my case, says Joe.

As the discussion in Ulysses implies, it takes little time to identify the untenable positions asserted by national identities. However, despite the absence of consistent and universal elements, there is clear evidence that demonstrates how the belief in an Irish identity has been used to justify the miserable conditions that many communities and individuals have been forced to endure. It can therefore be argued that a national identity, like the concept of race, is rooted within discursive and ideological terrains, but still wields considerable influence over material conditions and experiences within societies.

A national identity is not focused upon regional areas within a country, and instead claims to represent various areas with one term. In relation to an Irish identity, there are no distinctions between counties or provinces, as geographical, historical and cultural particulars of these areas in Ireland are obfuscated in the term, ‘Irish’. ³ This is evident in many of the perceptions of those who were defined as ‘Irish’ in the United States.

A majority of the people emigrating from Ireland to the United States in the 19th century were Roman Catholic, and this led many Americans to associate Catholicism with an Irish identity. This association encouraged some members of the Irish Diaspora in the United States to differentiate themselves as ‘Scotch Irish’ due to the negative perception of Catholicism in the United States. ⁴ Many of the Scotch Irish were Presbyterians and Protestants who had traveled from Scotland to Northern Ireland plantations, ⁵ prior to their journey to the United States. The designation ‘Scotch Irish’ was therefore used to distance individuals from the Catholicism, Irish nationalism and poverty of most Irish immigrants.

While many of the 19th century Irish immigrants fled from desperate poverty and arrived in destitute conditions, economic similarities began to cease when subsequent generations of Irish Americans were located in different class positions. Working class Irish communities identified these differences when they used terms such as ‘Lace Curtain Irish’ and ‘Hilltop Irish’ to criticize the Irish that assimilated into middle class America and who looked down upon the working class. Class, cultural and political divides are also apparent in definitions such as the ‘Butte Irish’ and the ‘Boston Irish’ (Emmons, 1990). These qualifications of an ‘Irish’ identity highlight how class conflicts and consciousness are also ignored in the creation of one Irish identity.

Despite the inability for an Irish identity to represent a group that can be considered the ‘same people’, those that discriminated against the Irish would rarely discriminate between the Irish. In the United States, the Irish experienced not only religious and political bigotry, but they were also discriminated against through racial overtones. The use of racism against the Irish was at times more prevalent than the racist discrimination against those defined as ‘Blacks’ or ‘negroes’. Describing his childhood in the northern United States, William Du Bois (2009: 14) recalled that ‘the racial angle was more clearly defined against the Irish than against me’, as ‘it was a matter of income and ancestry more than color’. This recollection of Du Bois describes the different criteria once utilized by those who enforced racial categorizations in the United States and highlights the contingent nature of racial hierarchies.

In the southern United States, Irish workers were often used instead of Black slaves for dangerous jobs, as the slave was a purchased asset, while the Irish worker’s life was considered dispensable without any incurred cost. This division of labor was witnessed by Frederic Law Olmstead as he watched workers load cotton bales onto a ship during his visit to the South in 1855. He observed Black workers recklessly tossing bales from the top of a chute down towards Irish workers, who would then stow them onto a ship. When he asked about this arrangement, he was told that ‘the niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything’ (Olmstead, 1996: 215).

American perceptions of the ‘Irish race’ led to situations where the Irish would also be subjected to worse cases of political disenfranchisement and economic marginalization than African Americans. One example of this can be found in the state of Rhode Island. Black men were able to vote in Rhode Island since 1840, but the state ‘delayed ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution until 1870, because legislators feared it might enfranchise members of the Celtic race’ (Painter, 2010: 107). Despite certain variations between both communities, the American establishment prevented both African Americans and Irish Americans from full political participation and economic security, which resulted in the proximity of their socioeconomic status to each other on the margins of American society. While tensions and acrimony existed between the groups, the possible ramifications of solidarity between the Irish and African American communities were not lost on the American elite. Fanny Kemble, wife of a plantation owner in Georgia, observed during the construction of the Brunswick Canal:

But the Irish are not only quarrelers, and rioters, and fighters, and drinkers, and despisers of niggers – they are a passionate, impulsive, warm-hearted, generous people, much given to powerful indignations, which break out suddenly when not compelled to smoulder sullenly − pestilent sympathizers too, and with a sufficient dose of American atmospheric air in their lungs, properly mixed with a right proportion of ardent spirits, there is no saying but what they might actually take to sympathy with the slaves, and I leave you to judge of the possible consequences. You perceive, I am sure, that they can by no means be allowed to work together on the Brunswick Canal. (Zinn, 2003: 176−177)

The concerns of Fanny Kemble were justified, as leaders in both the Irish and African American communities found common ground in their struggle under racial oppression. Black abolitionists could point to the Irish experience under English colonialism to contextualize the injustices African Americans suffered in the United States. Similarly, many influential Irish leaders viewed the American institution of slavery as a continuation of the suffering that the Irish endured under English rule. Daniel O’Connell, a leader of the Catholic Emancipation movement in Ireland understood the need to fight against both colonialism and slavery:

Gentleman, God knows I speak for saddest people the sun sees; but may my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if to save Ireland, even Ireland, I forget the negro one single hour. (Ignatiev, 1995: 6)

O’Connell’s solidarity with African Americans occurred at a time when the national identity of Irish Catholics in the English colonial system constituted a prominent feature within a system of racial hierarchy (Quinn, 1966). Despite this commonality in the struggles against colonialism and slavery, Irish nationalists and American abolitionists were unable to overthrow the racial hierarchy embedded within American society. Due to the large numbers of Irish immigrants in the United States, both the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church offered them an opportunity to become White in exchange for their support (Roedigger, 2007: 139).

As Noel Ignatiev (1995) has documented, many Irish Catholics developed a series of political associations (economic and social alliances) and undertook other actions that demonstrated an acceptance of and allegiance to the American racial hierarchy that led many Irish to be defined as White. The ‘White Irish’ were therefore not automatically born into Whiteness based upon biological characteristics. Instead, Whiteness was something ‘did “on” (though not by) themselves’ in a process that worked to produce a distance between the Irish and African American communities (Ignatiev, 1995: 52). Whiteness guaranteed this distance and provided the destitute Irish with an increased public and psychological wage during a highly unstable period of American history (Roeddiger, 2007).

Despite the significant benefits that were offered to the Irish, not all members of the Irish Diaspora distanced themselves from African American communities, or sought inclusion into the expanded version of Whiteness that developed in the United States. Instead, the interactions between the two communities produced a number of intermarriages, as is evident in areas such as New York City. In his research into the marriages between the Irish and African American communities, Cassidy (2007: 107) examined the 1870 Federal Census records of present-day SoHo and found:

In just a single New York City ward, there were hundreds of Irish-African-American families crammed together in the tenements and rookeries of Laurens (W. Broadway), Thompson, Sullivan, and Spring streets.

Ignatiev (1995) cites the 1848 Draft Riots as a critical event within the process of how the Irish became White, as he argues that the violence committed by certain Irish groups against African Americans was a demonstration of distance between the two communities. This conclusion ignores a significant amount of the relations between Irish and African Americans that continued several years later. In the 1870 Federal Census, it was reported that 12% of the African American community in New York City defined themselves as Irish-African-American (Cassidy, 2006). This definition not only reveals that many Irish immigrants did not separate themselves from African Americans, but it also provides an important insight into how many Irish became Black.

The category ‘Irish-African-American’ contains a series of references to political and geographical entities. It begins with the nation state of Ireland (Irish), followed by a continent (African), and then concludes with American, in reference to the country in which the census was undertaken. This method of classification reveals a priority of identification when determining a citizen’s ethnicity. The term ‘Irish’ collects people from across counties and provinces in Ireland under one definition that refers to a nation state. ‘African’ is a label used to describe people from different countries across a continent. According to the Federal Census of the United States, Europeans were categorized by different countries of origin (French, German, Italian, Irish, etc.), whereas Africans are given one label for an entire continent, without any mention of a nation state.

The Irish distinction within Irish-African-American was eventually removed, and this has had significant implications for members of the Irish Diaspora who intermarried with the African American community. Eliminating parts of someone’s heritage not only affects their connection to the past, but it also significantly influenced their involvement in American society. This becomes clear when the term ‘American’ is preceded by ‘African’. The two terms appear contradictory in the definition of ‘American’ found in Noah Webster’s first American Dictionary in 1828, where he defines the term with specific reference to heritage:

A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper-colored races, found here by the Europeans; but now applied to the descendants of Europeans born in America. (Chaplin, 2007: 60)

The antagonisms faced by those defined as Black and American have been described as both internal and external conflicts. In 1897, William Du Bois addressed the internal dilemma produced by the American racial hierarchy when he spoke of his double consciousness. ⁶ He described two conflicting forces that ran throughout his identity, with one half of this ‘two-ness’ relating to national identity (being an American), and the other relating to race (being a Negro). He lamented that the African American has ‘two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder’ (Du Bois, 2007: 8). Du Bois’ assessment of his internal conflict would be an experience that many members of the Irish Diaspora in the United States would also face after being defined as Black.

The Olympic athlete Tommie Smith described the external contradictions that divide American and Black identities. During the 1968 Olympics, Smith and his teammate John Carlos both gave the Black power salute while standing on the Olympic medal podium, as Australian medal winner Peter Norman also wore a badge in solidarity. ⁷ Reflecting on the perceptions of how his actions were perceived, Smith stated:

If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight. (Stradling, 2009: 61)

Smith’s statement illustrates the antagonisms that were still in place many years after Webster’s first definition of American. According to Smith’s teammate John Carlos, athletic success was only capable of providing a temporary respite from the racial condemnations he faced off the track. He stated that he and Smith ‘are great Americans for 19.8 seconds; then we are animals so far as our country is concerned’ (Stradling, 2009: 62). Furthermore, Smith felt that race was not escaped, only qualified when he is on the track, as he felt that ‘People recognize me as a fast nigger, but that still means I’m a nigger’ (Stradling, 2009: 62).

Members of the Irish Diaspora who were defined as Black did not encounter a new struggle in the loss of their citizenship and other basic rights, as similar conditions had existed under English rule in Ireland. However, the previous experience of the Irish under English colonialism was ‘a case of racial oppression without reference to alleged skin color or, as the jargon goes, “phenotype”’ (Allen, 1994: 22). Skin color became the primary influence on racial definitions in the United States, as it replaced the blood produced from one’s lineage and other factors that were once deemed more appropriate markers (Painter, 2010: 104−131). This ‘color line’ divided the Irish Diaspora by marginalizing certain Irish Americans as an oppressed race and recruiting those Irish Americans that were defined as White into an oppressing race (Ignatiev, 1995: 1). This dramatic shift in the importance of color, in this case skin color, illustrates the significance of the sociohistorical context in which markers for race are defined:

Ideas about color, like ideas about anything else, derive their importance, indeed their very definition, from their context. They can no more be the unmediated reflex of psychic impressions than can any other ideas. It is ideological context that tells people which details to notice, which to ignore, and which to take for granted in translating the world around them into ideas about that world. It does not bother Americans of the late-twentieth century that the term ‘black’ can refer to physically white people, because an ideological context of which they are generally unaware has long since taught them which details to consider significant in classifying people. (Fields, 1981: 146)

The experience of the Irish in the United States demonstrates the social and political nature of racial formations, where race lacks essential characteristics and is historically flexible (Omi and Winant, 1994: 4). The dynamic nature of racial formations can be traced through Irish athletes that have participated in American sport. Despite an abundance of Irish surnames on athletic jerseys, many contemporary discussions focus on the number of ‘Black’ athletes in American sports. The most commonly produced perception of athletes under the current racial discourses prioritizes skin color over heritage and ignores how classifications such as ‘White’ and ‘Black’ conceal the intermixing of different communities across and within these generic terms. Irish experiences in sport can therefore provide a template to demonstrate how racial formations manipulate both subjective interpretations and material conditions of athletic events.

The price of the ticket

James Baldwin (1985: xx) compared the journey that many Irish had taken in order to become White with the journey he had taken to become Black, and assessed the difference in the destination each found:

The Irish middle passage… was as foul as my own, and as dishonorable on the part of those responsible for it. But the Irish became white when they got here and began rising in the world, whereas I became black and began sinking.

Baldwin’s observation provides an insight into the material consequences of the Black/White classification within the Irish Diaspora. The Irish who were defined as Black continued to sink after their arrival in the United States, while those that were defined as White would rise through increased wages, opportunities and privileges. Ignatiev (1995: 1−2) described the economic, political and social benefits that Whiteness conferred upon the Irish:

It meant at first they could sell themselves piecemeal instead of being sold for life, and later they could compete for jobs in all spheres instead of being confined to certain work; to Irish entrepreneurs, it meant they could function outside of the segregated market… It meant they were citizens of a democratic republic, with the right to elect and be elected, to be tried by a jury of their peers, to live wherever they could afford, and to spend, without racially imposed restrictions, whatever money they managed to acquire.

Sport was one of many areas in American society where racial transitions within the Irish Diaspora can be observed. Soon after Irish immigrants arrived in the United States in the 19th century, their communities began to host festivals and picnics that combined cultural, political and athletic events. At the second annual picnic of the Clan Na Gael Association of New York in 1871, a journalist writing for the Irish World explained the rationale behind the association:

The object of these associations is not dissimilar to that of the German Turnverein. It aims at the physical, social, and intellectual elevation of the Irish in America. It promotes a love of literature and social life in its clubrooms and in its gymnastic exercises it helps develop the Irish muscle. (Wilcox, 1994: 232)

In this context, the Irish used sport and other activities to encourage the self-development of members of their community. Sport was also combined with a series of collective goals, including the retention of Irish culture and the declaration of solidarity with those fighting for Irish independence from England. Irish communities established a number of sporting organizations that were given Gaelic names or were named after political and military leaders involved in the struggle for Irish independence. Many associations in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco were also established that were dedicated to the development of Gaelic sports and advancement of Irish interests (Darby, 2009).

The use of sport to retain an Irish national identity and advance Irish interests was not only pursued in the United States. ⁸ The major sporting organization of Ireland, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), was established to assist in the development of cultural and political autonomy from England, and those aims still remain critical elements of the organization’s charter (Cronin, 1996). In the drive to define and develop a specifically Irish national identity, references to race were not avoided in the discussion of Irish sport:

The Irish Celt is distinguished among the races for height and strength, manly vigour and womanly grace; despite wars and domestic disabilities, the stamina of the race has survived in almost pristine perfection. The ideal Gael is a matchless athlete, sober, pure in mind, speech and deed, self-possessed, self-reliant, self-respecting, loving his religion and his country with a deep and restless love, earnest in thought and effective in action. (Corry, 1989: 87 quoted in Bairner and Sugden, 1993: 29)

Within their native sport, the Irish created a space through which they were able to produce positive definitions of themselves that would not have been found in areas where they were marginalized by English colonialism or American discrimination. In contrast to the English and American depictions of the Irish, Irish representations were not produced to justify and legitimate the harsh conditions Irish people were forced to endure, and instead sought to challenge these conditions. The Irish were not the only group to use sport to provide a positive social space that mainstream social institutions would not permit. In the United States, the color line prohibited the African American community from participation in a number of social activities, including most college, amateur and professional sports. In order for Black athletes to participate in professional baseball, ‘Rube’ Foster created the Negro League in 1920, which is the only sports league ever owned by an African American in the United States. ⁹ Similar to the Irish experience, the African American community incorporated sports within community activities and believed it was a necessary component for the development of its members. In The Problem with Amusement, William Du Bois stressed the importance of athletic development when he wrote that the African American community should come to a place:

Where the man with all brain and no muscle is looked upon as almost as big a fool as the man with all muscle and no brain; and when the young woman who cannot walk a couple of good country miles will have few proposals in marriage (Miller and Wiggins, 2003: 39)

The African American community shared similar values and attitudes towards sport as the Irish community did, but their struggle was compounded by the enforcement of segregation upon sporting activities. The reliance upon professional sport careers was not a dependable method of social mobility, but it was nonetheless another economic opportunity denied to African Americans. Although the Irish faced discrimination in many areas of American society, they were able to participate in American sports. Not long after their entry into the American sporting world, they achieved success in a variety of sports such as track and field, rowing, and cricket (Wilcox, 1994). The Irish also were also successful in football and basketball, but their most notable achievements were in baseball and boxing. ¹⁰

The Irish community was quick to establish its reputation in baseball, where Wilcox (1994: 61) argues that the Irish realized greater immediate success than any other immigrant group in the United States. They were credited with dominating the sport between the years 1870 and 1900, and this success can be observed in both the demography of the league as well as in player achievements. Statistics based upon parental ethnicities of players estimate that from 1876 to 1884, 41% of major league players were Irish (Gerlach, 2002: 29). These numbers suggest that many members of the Irish Diaspora were able to prosper in professional baseball, although their successful reputation makes accurate estimates difficult to obtain. Due to the widespread recognition of the Irish in baseball, many players who were not Irish adopted Irish names in the hope of advancing their career (Wilcox, 2000: 236).

The disproportionate representation of Irish baseball players was not the only evidence of their achievements in professional baseball. Many Irish players also developed into the leading performers in baseball and they captained the top teams across the major leagues. ¹¹ The American media soon produced descriptions of Irish athletes that argued the Irish had superior innate abilities on the baseball diamond. In a discussion of Irish players in baseball, an editorial in the prominent Sporting News stated that, ‘the “Sons of Erin” had better beware… They will be challenged to prove their racial superiority one of these days’ (Peterson, 2000: 177).

This belief in the athletic superiority of the ‘Irish race’ indicates the early presence of a racial discourse in American sport commentary that was used not only to explain athletic performances on the field, but also the miserable living conditions many Irish experienced off the field. Irish athletic achievements could be used to reproduce the stereotypical descriptions of the Irish as strong in back, but weak in mind. Irish accomplishments in baseball produced media representations that stated teams ‘needed an infusion of Irish blood to make it [sic] win and that crafty Irishmen provided the sport with its generals and diplomats’ (Wilcox, 2006: 448). This focus on Irish athletes in media representations came at the expense of other achievements of the Irish community, and did not dispute existing stereotypes of the Irish that rationalized their placement in American society.

The Irish also achieved remarkable boxing success in the 19th century. Prior to the Civil War, Sam O’Rourke, Cornelius Horrigan, John C. ‘Benecia Boy’ Heenan, James ‘Yankee’ Sullivan, and John Morrisey were some of the many prominent Irish fighters in boxing. After the Civil War, Irish boxers such as Paddy Ryan, Jake Kilrain, John L. Sullivan and ‘Gentleman Jim’ Corbett were among the most successful boxers of the era (Wilcox, 1994: 58). As in baseball, racial categorizations of the Irish were associated with their dominance in boxing. Sections of the Irish community, such as ‘the Lace Curtain Irish’ in Boston, denounced the associations with brawling that boxing brought to the Irish in the United States (Wilcox, 2006: 451).

Despite concerns regarding how Irish boxers could produce negative views of the Irish community, boxing became the sport through which the Irish Diaspora produced the first modern sports superstar in the United States. The boxer John L. Sullivan has been regarded as ‘the first to take individual sporting celebrity from the neighborhood to the nation’, and was ‘the first to take boxing from the back alley and gutter into the urban arena’ (Isenberg, 1994: 209). The popularity of an athlete like John L. Sullivan, who was a first-generation Irish American from a working class background, was a new phenomenon in the United States. At the height of his fame, he met with American presidents, Pope Leo, and English royalty, and it was believed that he earned more than a million dollars in relative income. He would use this fame in both his business and political aspirations, as he received commercial endorsements and established his own motion picture company, while also running for Congress (Wilcox, 1994: 58).

Sullivan would not only represent the newly created commodity of sports celebrity, but he would also embody the color line established in boxing and other sports that divided the Irish Diaspora. He famously declared that he would fight any challenger, but he made one exception to this invitation. He stated that he would fight ‘all fighters – first come first served – who are white. I will not fight a negro. I never have and never shall’ (Isenberg, 1994: 293). ¹² Boxing was unique in that it was not as segregated as the other major American sports of basketball, baseball and football. However, as the example of Sullivan demonstrates, segregation was still unofficially enforced. Although he agreed to numerous fights with White boxers, Sullivan deprived many Black boxers of the status and lucrative financial sums that would accompany title fights by refusing to fight them.

Jack Burke, known as the Irish Lad, was another Irish boxer who enforced the color line. The accomplished boxer Peter Jackson was among the Black boxers that both Jack Burke and John L. Sullivan refused to fight. This led to Jackson’s famous challenge at the ringside of one of Burke’s fights, when he tried to taunt Burke in order to obtain a fight with him:

He (Burke) says he draws the color line. Well, John L. Sullivan, who also draws the color line, says he has no objection to meeting a colored fighter in private. If Mr. Burke is of the same way of thinking, I will gladly meet him tonight, tomorrow or any day he might select in a cellar, barn or any private room he chooses to name and will wager him 1,000 pounds on the result. (Wiggins, 1994: 203)

Sullivan never did meet Jackson, even in private. However, not long after the careers of Sullivan and Burke were over, another boxer from the Irish Diaspora became the new celebrity in boxing. The world famous boxer, Muhammad Ali, was one of the many Irish athletes that were situated on the other side of the color line opposed by Sullivan and Burke. During his appearance on The Dick Cavett Show (1978), Ali was asked about his mother’s maiden name, Grady. Ali stated that his great grandfather, Abe Grady, was Irish. ¹³ This revelation led to the following dialogue between Cavett and Ali:

As the conversation reveals, the descendents of Ali’s great grandfather, Abe Grady, never became White. In the context of the 1970s, Grady was the last of his family to be considered ‘pure White’, as his children had an African American mother. This story is representative of how many other members of the Irish Diaspora became Black. Grady (Irish) married a freed slave (African American), and their offspring would eventually be defined as African American. Ali was never defined as Irish, and instead various institutions in the United States would ensure that Ali was defined as and punished for being Black.

Muhammad Ali and other athletes became part of a trend in late 20th century American sports where Black became the new ‘Irish’. Following the end of segregation in professional sports and the relative decrease of European immigration into the country, professional sport in America found new communities to recruit from. Many of those that entered sport were now defined as Black athletes, despite the overwhelming presence of Irish surnames that has continued up until the present day. It is therefore difficult to argue that the Irish became White after reading the sports pages, as many individuals with Irish heritage are now commonly defined as Black.

Conclusion

Shortly before his 1972 fight against Al ‘Blue’ Lewis in Dublin, Muhammad Ali discussed his views of Irish history during an interview with Cathal O’Sullivan on Radio Telefis Eireann (1972):

This is one thing I love and I admire about the Irish people. I studied a little of the history since I’ve been here. I found out you’ve been underdogs for years, for hundreds of years. People dominating you, and ruling you. And you can identify with this freedom struggle, you understand? But I just have my mind on the other side of the water. But, we’re all fighting for the same cause and idea, but we have different reasons and different approaches.

Like many others before him, Muhammad Ali viewed the struggle for Irish independence as a struggle against oppression that was similar to the struggle of African Americans in the United States. He viewed the conditions in Ireland with a perspective similar to Theodore Allen’s ‘Irish mirror’, which used the Irish experience to show how race operates as a form of social control to maintain a hierarchal and political structure (Allen, 1994). While Allen’s Irish mirror is a useful tool to compare racial experiences in one society to another, the framework of an ‘Irish bifocal’ is capable of providing a number of insights when examining the racial ideologies in sport and other areas of the United States.

One of the slogans of the anti-Irish and nativist Know Nothing Party was that ‘The Negro is black outside’ and ‘The Irishman is black inside’. The view through an Irish bifocal reveals that these false dichotomies are easily dismantled, and provides an insight into the processes of racial formation. A perspective that incorporates the Irish experience shows that the contingent categories of ‘Black’ and ‘Irish’ are not mutually exclusive as the color line suggests, because many individuals can proclaim membership of both groups. It is the analysis of this color line, particularly how it divided the Irish Diaspora, that can open up many different ways of understanding how racial formations have evolved in American society.

There has been an extensive amount of academic research produced that has examined the discourse of race, discrimination and athletic performance in sport (Kahn, 1991; Sammons, 1994). None of these studies attempt to discuss the significant presence of Green (Irish) backgrounds that are generally discarded when athletes are defined as Black. The inclusion of Irish American athletes in the study of racial formations in American society can contextualize the similarities and differences between past and present racial attitudes and contest the foundations upon which they are based. It further demonstrates how sport is not merely receptive of racial discourse, but has become productive in racial formations by making sense of race and working to reshape it (Carrington, 2010: 66).

The sports discourse no longer focuses on national heritage in its definition of league demographics, and instead it uses categories such as White, Latino, Asian and African American categories. For example, baseball is no longer 41% Irish as it was at one point in the 19th century, and instead it is now defined as 38.3% nonWhite ¹⁴ (Lapchick et al., 2010a). Discussions of dominant ‘Irish blood’ or the ‘Irish race’ in relation to athletic abilities have essentially disappeared, and now the focus is upon the correlation between the ‘Black’ race and athleticism (Hoberman, 1997). These changes can reproduce current rationalizations of racial formations, but can also be used to highlight their social and political nature, as well as the absence of any essential traits in their conceptual history.

An Irish bifocal would avoid the one-sided approach found in Ignatiev’s (1995: 2−3) research that argued ‘in becoming White, the Irish ceased to be Green’, as it would also examine how the Irish who became Black also ceased to be ‘Green’. A bifocal approach would be better suited to create a critical elaboration as imagined by Gramsci (1971: 324), as it would aim to produce an inventory of the historical processes that currently define modern athletes. This inventory of processes reveals and contextualizes the operational techniques and contradictory foundations of racial formations in professional sport, as well as in other arenas throughout American society.