Ethnic Groups and Discrimination
By
Antoinette Oellrich
Janetta Mcdowell
ETH 125
02/08/2009
My name is Antoinette Oellrich, I am an African American woman, who is married to a white man. My husband’s background is a mixture of cultures such as French, Greek, German and Irish. Since me and my husband are going to school together and we are in the same classes I am writing this paper on his background of Irish American Immigrants. The reason I have choose this assignment is because I wanted to know more about his ancestry and where his family has come from and even though I am of the African descent, I am more intrigued by his culture, however I am doing more of a comparison concept for my paper. Now we as people already know a lot about the history of African Americans from either our parents or from school subjects, but the other cultural histories are not spoken upon broadly or often enough.
Irish Immigrants came to America on boats in search of a new beginning or a better life then that of their on diplomatic structure in Ireland. The Irish who came to America on these boats had to stay in the bottom sections of the boats, just like the animals or stowaways. Unlike the African Americans the Irish came to America under their own free will. The African American people were captured and sold to the whites for all types of survival equipment and foods. The Irish started to migrant to American in the 19th century. Slavery of African Americans began in the 1600’s, well before the Irish began to migrate. During the most of the 19th century the Irish were divided as a country which therefore was helpless in the face of its grave problems. According to the website (library.thinkquest.org) it stated that because of the Napoleonic wars, the Irish became impoverished, due to the overly large population. Due to this happening the Irish began to migrant to America to get relief and try to find better riches. When Irish began to...