On March 17th every year, Irish heritage becomes a point of pride for people throughout the world. Particularly in the US, where nearly everyone has immigrant ancestry, there is a certain dignity gained through the ability to claim an Irish lineage on that day. For me, having an Irish immigrant mother has always had social benefits; since Kindergarten, people have enjoyed hearing her Irish accent and then proceeded to share their own families’ cultural heritage. I don’t know of any other immigrant group in the United States that receives the same type of attention as the Irish; it’s quite peculiar, really. Though the Irish are afforded a special sort of attention in the U.S. and some treatments of Irish cultural heritage are certainly positive, the way Ireland is represented in the US often makes me uncomfortable.

All over the country, nearing St. Patrick’s Day, one can spot t-shirts proclaiming “Instant Irish: Just Add Beer,” “Irish Today, Hungover Tomorrow,” and “I’m So Irish I Bleed Whiskey.” These slogans many students sport around campus reinforce the stereotype of the ‘drunken Irishman.’ Nearly 80% of Irish adults consume alcohol, and more than half of alcohol drinkers in Ireland have a “harmful pattern” of drinking. So over 40% adults in Ireland are alcoholics; shall we raise a glass to that?

Stereotypes are not inherently bad, but we ought to be aware of them in order to be careful with how far we take them, and how they reflect on different communities. Joking about Irish drunkenness can be okay, but the way in which this stereotype permeates US society’s view of Ireland, Irish culture, and Irish immigration inhibits a balanced understanding of these subjects. When people here think of what it means to be Irish, they first think of green beer (and sometimes, as an afterthought, of Catholicism and the Northern Ireland conflict). This both reflects poorly on Irish culture, and promotes problematic perceptions of Irish people themselves. Maybe, to understand this cultural simplification, it might help to look at some ideas outsiders have of what Americans are like.

When my mother was growing up in Ireland, her idea of Americans was based largely on television. One show that stood out was “The Waltons,” about a large family in rural Virginia during World War II. My mother and her siblings as children would mimic the Waltons’ classic closing: “goodnight, Daddy,” “goodnight, John-Boy,” “goodnight, Jim-Bob,” etc. (in the USA, all boys apparently had two names). Their attempt at American ac- cents sounded about as real as do the faux-Irish accents I hear everywhere around this time of year—that is to say, they were grossly exaggerated.

When I was growing up in the U.S., I likewise had a few different ideas of what characterizes Ireland. Once I asked my mother if she and her brothers and sisters had fought a lot growing up. “We fought, but not more than most kids do; why?” she asked. “Well, do Irish people fight a lot?” I explained my reason for asking. As a child, I hadn’t figured out that the “Fighting Irish” of Notre Dame’s football team referred to the athletes’ fierceness on the field, and not to the combative nature of Irish people. Just as U of M chose a fierce, rodent-like animal to use as our mascot, Notre Dame’s mascot must be based on some sort of Irish cultural reality and Irish people must just fight a lot.

This memory is more remarkable when taken in context: I first started school in Ireland, and I had friends there. I knew that Irish people are not more aggressive than anyone else (and less than many, one could argue). But the pervasiveness of the stereotypes made me question that knowledge which I’d gained through experience. Irish people must wear green and drink a lot. They’re quaint, Catholic, superstitious, and they have red hair (never mind the fact that most sources report that less than 10% of Irish people actually have red hair). Stereotypes in the US about Irish people are so powerful that few question them. St. Patrick’s Day should challenge these stereotypes by celebrating Irish history, not reinforce them by ignoring it.

The difference between using beer to celebrate St. Patrick ’s Day, versus drinking on other holidays, is in what it represents. On most holidays, alcohol adds to the festivity. On St. Patrick’s Day, drinking is the main festivity.

Upon running a Google search for “St. Patrick’s Day Ann Arbor,” the first entry listed is from www.annarbor. com: the local beer-drinker’s guide to St. Patrick’s Day.

Conversations about Irish culture and Irish-American heritage, which could be facilitated by this holiday, are instead reduced to conversations about how to get as drunk as possible. Why don’t we focus on the fact that Irish immigrants played a large role in building railroads in the US Midwest—a task that was so dangerous at the time that slaveholders did not want to risk the lives of their slaves to complete it? I have yet to see a shirt that says “My Ancestors Paved the Way for Your Ancestors to Get Here.” No, we stick with drinking slogans.

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