If this was an American you were speaking to it was probably based on the incorrect application of Irish American history to overall Irish history.
A lot of Irish Americans are now claiming that their ancestors were slaves just like African Americans. While this is true. Irish Americans were not under chattel slavery. They were indentured servants that could work their way to freedom. I am aware that the way the Scottish and the Irish were treated in Britain was very brutal and they were also flogged and whipped. Where the Irish experience delineates from the African American experience is literally when the Irish moved to America. Because in America to gain the status of being a “white person” was a goal toward a social class. An African American for the most part could never reach that goal of class status based on their appearance.
For instance a curly haired Irish man could easily lose his accent in just one generation as well as marry a straight haired Anglo Saxon. So the child could literally gain Anglo Saxon status in one generation if the Irish immigrant was determined enough. Which is why the Irish and Italians in America gained white Anglo Saxon assimilation status in the 1920s. Enough of them had shown they were more interested in assimilating and marrying into the Anglo caste system.
A similar thing appears to have happened all over Europe though? The Anglo Saxon caste system there appears to put the Romans they conquered under the heading of European or white which they are contained within that designation as well? The Anglo Saxons also appear to have placed Greek philosophy and history under the heading of European as well? The Anglo Saxons were not Greeks? Yet Anglo-Saxon now appears to represent the title of European? I just wonder why the Irish, Italians, and Greeks accept this title or heading? Are you European or are you Irish? Are they Italians (descendants of the Romans) or are they European? What exactly does European stand for? The Romans and the Anglo Saxons were not similar. The Greeks and the Anglo Saxons were not similar. Why do they now all fall under the designation of European?
Why do British schools teach Greek and Roman history as their own history? As an African American from the outside looking in it feels really similar to when the Anglo Saxon ruling class in America tried to erase our history and teach it as their history? What has the Anglo Saxon done? What is Anglo Saxon history that doesn’t just involve conquest? What Anglo Saxon empire existed in history to rival the Roman or Greek civilizations? They made an empire in present times out of existing Roman infrastructure but what is their history?
