High School Student Proves “No Irish Need Apply” Signs Existed

[kevingadd]

Jensen attracted a lot of attention because he did not just write that the NINA signs did not exist, he said the Irish were and are delusional, that in order to sustain a sense of victimhood they had manufactured a group-wide lie of discriminatory anti-Irish ads and signs. He said that believing that No Irish Need Apply Signs existed was the Irish equivalent of believing in leprechauns. Here is what Jensen wrote more than a decade ago:

If this is a remotely accurate characterization, it baffles me that Jensen's work would have found a home in a journal or that he would have felt comfortable expressing those views in public. How profoundly emotional and unscientific (not to mention vile and insulting)

Such a claim is extremely complicated (defying occam's razor) and implies some sort of conspiracy that is at the very least questionable without sound proof. The idea that such claims would have not been aggressively debunked in the past is pretty questionable, as well. The seemingly trivial task of finding evidence to support the existence of these ads makes me wonder if Jensen did any research at all. Was he just grinding his racist axe, and did the scientific community give him a pass on it because they didn't care?

[DanBC]

It's especially baffling because he accepts that newspaper ads saying "no irish need apply" were common, but that the signs on the buildings did not exist. Even if that's true it's weird to then say that Irish people were delusionally perpetuating their victimhood.

[Turing_Machine]

It's really interesting that, at least at that time and in that place, there appeared to be more employment discrimination against Irish than African-Americans. I noticed that several of the job ads would accept "colored" applicants, but not Irish.

Edit: "that" -> "than".

[djur]

At the time, black people were stereotyped as servile and easily pressed to work, while the Irish were stereotyped as pugilistic, unreliable layabouts (and, to some, sinister Papists).

[rangibaby]

There was a joke about this in Blazing Saddles

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD0BcQTIr4c

[justwannasing]

At one time it was true for Hungarians, too.

Oh, no. Don't tell me this is going to be trending now.

[packetized]

I cannot recall such an elegant and well researched response to such a load of whale shit.

[aaronbrethorst]

It's not exactly hard to prove that this used to appear in newspapers all the time. A 10 second search on the LOC website shows a ton of examples of this phrase appearing in papers across America: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?stat...

Professor Jensen should be ashamed of himself for failing to conduct even the most trivial searches for this information.

[DanBC]

He accepted that ads were discriminatory. His original paper mentions job ads. His claim was about signs in windows or on buildings.

The fact that he accepts the ads were real makes his claim that Irish were delusionally propagating a myth of oppression even harder to understand.

[unstabilo]

You didn't read the search results. Those are not ads, but articles mentioning the phrase, at least on the first page (20 articles).

[DonHopkins]

His research is as sloppy as his proofreading. I can see him sputtering and fuming as he angrily types out that last condescending reply to her.

[randyrand]

Ashamed? Lol I think he'll be just fine.

[LoSboccacc]

Well one had to say the whole premise of 'couldn't find evidence thus fact didn't exist' was fishy even before the article started digging out the evidence that reseaecher somehow missed.

[lotharbot]

> "the whole premise of 'couldn't find evidence thus fact didn't exist' was fishy"

Not really. The one thing he's correct about is that, if NINA was a real and widespread phenomenon, it would show up in certain pieces of documentation of the era -- newspaper want ads, for example (we actually have fairly large archives from the relevant era; it's not like something from thousands of years ago where it's plausible that no documentation would have survived.) His problem was that he didn't look deeply enough, and once he drew the initial wrong conclusion, he invented a totally wrong theory to explain it.

[ectoplasm]

> I’m the PhD who wrote the original article. I’m delighted a high school student worked so hard and wrote so well.

He's certainly not doing himself any favors with this condescending appeal to authority. In general, the exchange between Jensen and Fried is a perfect example of how to handle a nasty person with grace.

[raverbashing]

Why am I not surprised?

I wouldn't put it past the fact that the high schooler probably knows how to google better than the "phd"

"Jensen attracted a lot of attention because he did not just write that the NINA signs did not exist, he said the Irish were and are delusional, that in order to sustain a sense of victimhood they had manufactured a group-wide lie of discriminatory anti-Irish ads and signs"

Oh wow, lovely lad

Another edit: "Wanted - A Middle Aged protestant woman... no Irish need apply" I think it would be hard to find an Irish Protestant at that time, no?

[pygy_]

Her replies display an impressive amount of maturity, and her style is perfect.

She'll go places.

[mng2]

Yeah, yikes. Jensen is really piling it higher and deeper.

[swang]

he apparently is the real life incarnate of "tl;dr"

[PhasmaFelis]

Jensen: "No other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs."

How on Earth did anyone take this man seriously? Is he a visitor from an alternate universe where segregation never happened?

[dspeyer]

It is weird that this exact phrase kept getting used against the Irish and not other discriminated-against groups. Nothing for Poles, Slavs, Italians, Russians... Or at least that's what I'm finding on the LoC search. A few "No Jews Need Apply", but only a few, and those aren't job listings.

Probably not a particularly important mystery, but weird.

[rmason]

It's called researchers bias where someone so fervently believes something is true that it influences their research. NINA is a good example of an uncomfortable truth.

[briandear]

Same could be said for human caused global warming..

[dalke]

I read about the "NINA" paper when it came out. This summary of the new historical research amply shows that the original thesis indeed needs "substantial modification".

While it says nothing of the historical accuracy, the exchange between the two historians, quoted in the text, makes me lean much more in favor of the researcher behind the new work.

[mcphage]

> Let me make one last point and then I promise I will shut up and give you the last word if you want it. You began this conversation by stating that the article “did not claim to find a single window sign anywhere in the USA.” I think we now agree at least that this is not correct. Many are specifically listed.

Ouch. That's a serious burn.

[Lorento]

It's funny how blind people are to the same thing happening today. Most employers openly refuse people based on their nationality and we are perfectly accepting of that, even enforcing it with the law!

I wonder if people in another 100 years will think it's wrong to discriminate against people because of who their parents were.

[njloof]

If this is a veiled reference to affirmative action, at least show the courage to say what you really mean.

[pavel_lishin]

> Most employers openly refuse people based on their nationality and we are perfectly accepting of that, even enforcing it with the law!

I assume you're talking about the H-1B visas, etc?

[metasean]

Reminds me of a sign I saw in the Pueblo, Co train depot - http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/mix97-3.com/files/201...

For attribution purposes, the image is associated with an enlightening write-up, but that particular image isn't in the actual article - http://mix97-3.com/youre-never-too-old-for-a-spring-break-le...

[aaron695]

Australian bricklayer employment ad says “No Irish” need apply (2012)

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/australian-bricklayer-emplo...

Totally irrelevant to the conversation other than perhaps the myths/realities/realities that become myths/myths that become realities perhaps traverse time.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=irish+need+not+ap...

[nailer]

Australia's pretty backward about this stuff. E.g. example: someone on HN yesterday was saying Jeremy Clarkson (from the UK) wasn't old enough to remember the racist version of 'eeny meeny miny mo'. I remember it and I was born in Australia in the 80s.

[goodcanadian]

I didn't think the existence of such signs was a contested bit of history. I guess you can find apparently qualified people espousing all sorts of nonsense.

[epochwolf]

There are people denying the holocaust. An event for which plenty of historical evidence exists. People will believe what they want to believe.

[gilgoomesh]

Website has slowed to a crawl. Here's Google's text cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:23zU9KH...

[nl]

historians have not discovered reports of any in the United States, Canada or Australia.

Oh really? Australia, 1862:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/115763711?searchTerm...

[bane]

Here's what the signs look like for those interested, most appear to be from London.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22no+irish%22+window+...

Here's a reddit thread on the issue

https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3erkxv/nina_no_i...

[kjs3]

I've met a certain subculture of racists who like to point to articles like this and say things like "well since there were never NINA signs, discrimination against blacks couldn't have been as bad as it was". Reading Jensen you can see how he's a kindred spirit of such people. It's apparent he started out with "I think the Irish were lazy, violent and anti-American who need victim-hood to maintain their identity" and set to work to prove it.

[bruceb]

The myth of bad treatment of returning Vietnam vets is something you see in the movies but apparently didn't really happen much: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/20...