#and i say that as someone who's great-great-grandmother took my great-grandfather and fled fascist Italy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

arctic-hands · 1 year ago

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[Image Description: first image: stock photo of three black t-shirts. The first one says on top "Irish By Blood American By Birth" followed by the American flag (thirteen horizontal stripes alternating between red and white, a blue box in the upper left corner containing fifty white stars) merging with the Irish flag (three vertical stripes of green, white, and orange), with the bottom text saying "Patriot By Choice". The second shirt has a fading out Thin Blue Line flag used by American police (a vertical American flag with the red replaced by black, usually with the third white stripe from the right replaced with a blue line, but on this shirt the blue line has been replaced with green, followed by a white stripe and then an orange stripe). The third flag has a somewhat transparent police badge superimposed over the Irish flag, with the word "Irish" up top in big letters, and smaller letters I can't make out on the bottom. Second image: a screenshot of D.W. from the cartoon Arthur (an anthropomorphic animal nominally called an aardvark but lacking the long nose, leaving a flat, tanned fur face and with darker human-like hair in a bob), looking at someone/thing offscreen with a look of disbelief and/or disgust on her face. End I.D.]

Irish people, I NEED to know: What do you think of these weird shirts that rednecks in my home town wear?

#image described #as someone whose Irish ancestors came to the U.S. as indentured servants to English masters–#–which to be clear i am not equating to chattel slavery but indentured servitude did suck in its own right–#and whose Irish and Scottish (not necessarily Scots-Irish but i do have a smaller percentage of Ulster Scots) ancestors settle in Appalachi #as working class poor rednecks #i despise Irish cops and Irish American conservatives in general #how are you going to take 'cultural pride' in a culture that was brutally oppressed and in some cases/places still are and then turn around #and become a brutalizing oppressor towards other people #i have to wonder if my family's history of indentured servitude is why i have yet to find any record of my KY and TN ancestors owning slave #but then i do know that it's not unheard of for indentured servants & descendants to turn around and become slaveowners so idk #anyway Irish Americans are the most brain dead self-unaware culture in America and i say that as an Irish American #we used to go to Celtic cultural pride fairs a lot and the scene was rife with Confederate attitudes and imagery #and this was in Indiana and Ohio. two Union states. tho Indiana might as well be South Lite #and as i am more aware of Nazi imagery and dogwhistles as an adult i know now that some of those 'Celtic crosses' were Nazi symbols #anyway #rambling in the tags #acab #might as well tag this as #still rambling about ancestry #while I'm at it #edit: that's not true about what i said about brain dead Irish Americans the Italian American culture is also stupidly self-unaware #and i say that as someone who's great-great-grandmother took my great-grandfather and fled fascist Italy

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