By Ryan Harrington, Contributor
Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, right?
From the Gaelic street signs adorning South Buffalo to the Polish Broadway Market on the East Side, Buffalo is a culturally rich city with a large diaspora of immigrant communities. Recently, our city has continued our history of diverse heritage by welcoming more immigrants from more countries, but traditionally Buffalo was comprised of Irish, Italian, Polish and German enclaves that gradually mixed into a ‘Catholic immigrant soup.’ The legacy of this ‘mix’ lives on in many Buffalonians’ identities. As St. Patrick’s Day marches past with green milk and shamrock shakes, I celebrate being Irish American.
Last spring I studied abroad in Galway, Ireland, and people would constantly ask me: “Why here?” The Irish tourism industry supports Irish Americans’ claims of heritage, as it often leads to more visitors and more profit. University students, on the other hand, are less charmed by those claims. When American students say they’re Irish, the response, overwhelmingly, is: “You think you’re Irish.” I, instead, claimed a vague desire to see and enjoy the country. This satisfied most people; they were glad I was not one of those Americans, who trample their cemeteries to point feebly at random stones and say they’re connected to a foreign land.
I loved Ireland and I encountered wonderful people and culture, but also, an anti-American sentiment. Americans are viewed poorly abroad, even in the land of céad míle fáilte – a hundred thousand welcomes. To Europeans, we are fat, rude, stupid and indistinct. Frustration with American notions of ‘ethnic identity’ is widespread. If you ask exchange students at Canisius, they will not tell you that we are Irish, Italian, Polish or German: we’re American.
In Ireland, I was American, but in Buffalo, I’m Irish. My childhood was christened by a parochial school helmed by an Irish nun, celebrated with Jameson and Black Velvet Bands, and I graduated from a single-sex high school. This is not the Great American Way; it’s a result of my heritage. My education reminded my Irish friends more of their own than a stereotypical American high schooler’s. I think I’m Irish because it carries that sense of my cultural identity to other Americans.
I am not ethnically American; I have no Indigenous ties. The Irish, who scarcely have immigrants, neglect how immigrants separate themselves from the general populace. Irish immigrants settled into enclaves because they faced discrimination from the ‘established’ White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The immigrants were portrayed as cheats, drunks and devolved humans given simian faces in political cartoons. Our ancestors defined themselves against that America and we have the right to recognize that.
Many elements of ‘Irish culture’ are not even native Irish. With such a long history of emigration, communities in foreign lands developed a different sense of Irish tradition. St. Patrick’s Day is actually an American holiday. The large-scale celebration developed as an expression of Irish pride in New York City. Traditional Irish music reentered Ireland from The Irish Rovers in Toronto. St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish!
The Irish have made strides to reintegrate the generations of diaspora, or people living with Irish heritage abroad. Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson introduced the tradition of the ‘Tilley Lamp.’ In the Irish countryside, it was traditional to keep a gas lamp lit in the window of friendly homes to guide travelers through the dark hills and welcome them if they needed refuge. Now, a Tilley lamp sits in the window at the presidential residence and welcomes emigrants back to Ireland.
We’re all Irish, especially on St. Patrick’s Day! In this holiday, we find unity. The streets of Galway were ridiculously crowded on St. Patrick’s Day, but most of those people were American tourists. Having lived there for three months, I never felt more Irish – aside from when I faked an Irish accent for free entry to French museums as an EU resident – than I did as I scoffed alongside the natives at ‘stupid Americans’ who didn’t know where they were going. Tourists bypassed Irish natives to ask me, a redhead, for directions.
But then I sat down in an Irish pub and listened to The Black Velvet Band, the same Canadian Irish song my father played my whole childhood, and I felt like a Buffalo boy again.
There are two sides to this lucky gold coin; if you’re American, don’t fly to Ireland and shout “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, I’m Irish too!” Still, we have decades of cultural tradition right here. We can be proud to be Irish American, or Buffalo Irish, too! St. Patrick’s is as fun in South Buffalo, NY, as it is in Ireland. You can enjoy traditional Irish (Canadian) music, whiskey and a lovely parade all from your backyard. I know I’ll personally be at the World’s Shortest Parade in Lackawanna drinking in this shared holiday.
As we trudge further from Ellis Island, we become more American, but regardless of foreign attitudes, we do not submerge into a Great American Mush. From the land of a thousand welcomes to the city of good neighbors, culture continues on. So Buffalo, keep saying you’re Irish, Italian, Polish, German or anything else. As grandsons and granddaughters of immigrants, we have earned the right to claim our homeland and our motherland – we’re Buffalo Irish!