alt Hacker NewsWhat's wrong? I don't think i've made any non-empirical claims.
The 1790 law forbids naturalization of non-whites. Irish were naturalized. QED. There's no debate here.
The idea that "whiteness" was understood in 1790 as some kind of "social category of prestige" is mad, and patently ahistorical. It's also empirically demonstrably false. It should also be obviously false if you think about it for a few seconds: did 18th race-realists, basically all western people, who thought humans came in well-defined breeds of which 'white' was one, and 'black' another -- think that the irish weren't white?
Oooof
You think the 18th race-"realists" (urgh), "who thought humans came in well-defined breeds of which 'white' was one", would stop there and not begin to divide white people between "good" white sub-races and "vile" white sub-races? You really think that those racists thought that once you're white, you're all good?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment#/media/Fi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment#/media/Fi...
An English priest in 1860:
"I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw in Ireland. .. to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much"
Benjamin Disraeli, 1836:
"[The Irish] hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood."
_The Spectator_ News magazine in 1882:
"The Tragedy at Maamtrasna, investigated this week in Dublin, almost unique as it is in the annals of the United Kingdom, brings out in strong relief two facts which Englishmen are too apt to forget. One is the existence in particular districts of Ireland of a class of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings, and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men; and the other is their extraordinary and exceptional gloominess of temper. In remote places of Ireland, especially in Connaught, on a few of the islands, and in one or two mountain districts, dwell cultivators who are in knowledge, in habits, and in the discipline of life no higher than Maories or other Polynesians."
H. P. Lovecraft (yes, the famous author), in 1921 (!):
"If the Irish had the 'right' to independence they would possess it. If they ever gain it, they will possess it – until they lose it again. England has the right to rule because she does ... It is not chance, but racial superiority, which has made the Briton supreme. Why have not the Irish conquered and colonized the earth if they be so deserving of regard? They are brainless canaille."
You are deeply uneducated on the topic. I would suggest you stop commenting on a subject you know nothing about and learn a thing or two before interacting again.