Irish immigrants have been coming to the United States long before the American War of Independence. Many of these immigrants came over as servants, or prisoners sent to penal colonies in the new world, and in the 1800’s to escape famine, threat, and to purse their American dream.
Along with African Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, and all other X-Americans the Irish have been stereotyped. Just as blacks are often stereo typed as ‘gang bangers’, Italian Americans as Mob Soprano types, Irish-Americans have long been stereotyped as brawling, drinking, red-headed step children.
In the image below you’ll see a cartoon from the 1800’s portraying an Irish stereotype. The woman illustrated looks combative and physically unflattering compared to the ‘white’ woman in the cartoon.
And has any of that changed in today’s world of multi cultural diversity and inclusion? Other than the many workplace laws we have in place making it illegal to hire, fire, or discriminate based on race or ethnicity, the image of the Irish stereotype still exists to most still to this day…
If you search google images for Irish Drinking, it will return nearly 300,000 results. http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&q=Irish+drinking&btnG=Search+Images
Type in Irish Fighting and the search results are endless…
To many University of Notre Dame fans ‘The Fighting Irish’ is a source of pride. They use the ‘Fighting Irish’ Leprechaun as the school’s mascot. Of course this doesn’t help the stereo type, only fuels it more. 
One look at this year’s Notre Dame basketball starting line up illustrates the school and the national media is perfectly happy portraying Irish American and University of Notre Dame star basketball player Luke Harangody like a big linebacker fighting and bruising Irish type during this year’s NCAA tourney.
No of this of course helps the stereotype. Were any of the other tall white big men at any of the state schools portrayed this way? Isn’t Luke Harangody just another big tall white center? Why does Notre Dame and the national media have to portray him to some degree like the common Irish stereotype? Therefore this illustrates that even today we still live with, and tolerate some of the same stereo types towards Irish-Americans (and others) that existed in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. And until its no longer tolerated it probably will continue…
