It's interesting to note that the Irish, the ethnic sweethearts of modern America, with all their leprechauns, shillelaghs, and freckled, red-headed Auld Sod charm, weren't always seen that way by Anglo America, or even by other immigrants. Back in the days of "No Irish need Apply" signs, they were considered little better than derby-wearing apes, as one famous period newspaper cartoon (I tried to find it to show it to you, but no luck) famously depicted them. They weren't exactly loved by the English either, but that's another story altogether, a bloody one. Not that the English have ever loved anybody but themselves.

My mother, a little Cuban girl raised in 1920s Bronx, New York (In a Jewish neighborhood, oy vey!) loathed the Irish to her dying day, although she always loved and respected the Jewish people and culture who made up the bulk of her friends and playmates. As she put it once "The Irlandeses have absolutely nothing in common with us, except that we are both island races". That's the kindest remarks I can remember her having for them.

Well, you can't reason with racists, even if you love them. You just have to let them go their way, and hope they don't hurt themselves, or anyone else. This Wise Latino Dude did learn one thing from being bicultural, though. Very early on I realized that the superstitions of my tribe were not the laws of physics, and that the "older and wiser" elders in your village were very often not only dead wrong, but sometimes downright nasty. The way We thought about Them, was often eerily similar to the way They thought about Us.

Of course, you could never explain this to them. They always had plenty of counterexamples that proved, without a doubt, how we were obviously racially superior.