"== scholarship explodes myths; encyclopedia should not hide facts == 

 6/29/05  RJensen: we need a discussion about ""racism"" here.  The so-called ""racist"" link one person objected to is to a major scholarly article that shows among many other pointsthat Protestants were not hostile (or ""racist"") toward the Irish.  To remove the link to a standard scholarly source (a leading professional history journal, no less) makes a travesty of an encyclopedia.  The article (which I wrote) is thoroughly documented with the latest scholarship and has been reviewed by dozens of college professors (many of them Irish themselves). 
 
 Maybe some Irishmen believe in old myths; that is fine...but they should not try to keep the facts away from Encyclopedia users.  Maybe they cannot handle the scholarly argument that they were not vicitimized in America (they were indeed victimized in the UK).  If someone still believes that urban myth after reading http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm  they might try finding some scholarship that supports their position and we can have a debate.  (There is no such scholarship by the way!) 

 Better to let our readers find links to solid scholarship.  I have removed links to sites that offer little on nothing of value to the user of an encyclopedia. 

 Richard Jensen (PhD and professor of history) 

 So let's say that there were no NINA signs, this in no way proves that the Irish were welcomed with open arms like you would have us believe. You have the nerve to say that Protestants didn't treat Irish Catholic immigrants as inferiors?? Sure they let the Irish do those dirty jobs that they wouldn't do, why wouldn't they? How do you conclude from this fact that they were treated as equals?  

 Barbarossa 
 
 :You are a racist. The encyclopedia should not promote racism. You are a racist for trying so hard to put this in the encyclopedia and you are proof that racism still exists today towards Irish-Americans. preceding unsigned comment by . 

 Racism against the Irish immigrants probably didn't exist in America to the same extent as it did in Britain, but it would be naive to say there was none. Prejudgice against strangers is unfortunately part of human nature and the remains of anti-Irishism in popular American culture can still be seen. 
 As a regular visitor to the US, I still experience some prejudgice, most of which is not meant to be offensive. There is still this view held that Ireland is a backwards, uneducated island of self-subsistant farmer. I realise these attitudes arise from ignorance and the ""green"" tinted glasses of some Irish-Americans. In fact, my friends and I have got used to playing to these stereotypes and watching the reaction of our new American friends as we reveal our true backgrounds! (I for example have a PhD in chemistry and am from an urban area on the west-coast of Ireland). 

 Anon. 

 Paragraph 6 is offensive! States no proof of signs being hung but that academic paper states they found 2 instances in the NYT classifieds, If 2 classifieds were found, to believe not one single sign was hung on a window is ridiculous no I mean stupid and offensive. Not to argue with Jensen’s paper but you can site David Duke and many anti Holocaust papers so what’s your point. Also as common sense it happened in Canada but we were spared? Come on! To say it was maybe anti catholic not anti Irish, you want to split hairs. How about the cartoons of the day characterizing the Irish with monkey attributes? The caring concerned Protestants (sited in Jensen’s article) building factory’s for the Irish to work in and hiring Irish women as domestic help as some kind of proof against discrimination is way off. I want to go to the slavery section and see how your twisted mind glorifies that! I guess the Irish were lucky to be able to build the railroad with the Chinese and compete with the Negro’s for jobs. This section needs a big RED FLAG!!! In closing when this encyclopedia starts saying the Holocaust never happened and slavery helped the blacks that is when it looses all credibility not just most! 

 One paper is not scholarship!! You stupid ignorant fools!! 
 **The paper involved appeared in the leading scholarly journal after dozens of specialistsmosty of them Irishworked over it. If you're really interested you might read a few of the 50+ scholarly studies it cites, or look at the primary sources on the www to which it links. Fact is there were no signs in USAjust a song about the signs. Computerized searching allows anyone to look through tens of thousands of pages of help-wanted ads looking for ""NINA"" (and related terms). Do they exist? many in London and some in Canada, and a couple in USA. The odds of a jobseeker seeing a NINA ad were one in a million. That's rare. As for the mills, you might read some of