Leprechaun

Leprechaun Index

· Name: Seán.

· Mother: Irish.

· Mother’s name: Maura.

· Mother’s accent: Irish

. Origin: Westmeath, greatly tempered with the indeterminate “educated Dubliner” (This is pre the D4 .); tempered not at all by 37 years in Amerikay.

· Lifelong residence: Massachusetts.

· Yearly vacation destination: Ireland.

· Obvious Irishness quotient in American suburb of my youth: 100%.

· References made to said Irishness, expressed in terms of Seldom, Infrequently, Frequently, Constantly: Constantly.

· Consideration of the last two facts above, in their importance to this author in the formation of Self, expressed in terms of Little Consideration, Some, Extensive Consideration: Little Consideration.

· Literary term that describes the last fact, in consideration of the vast importance of identity issues to this adult author: Irony.

· Upon consideration, the effect of this American portion of this author’s youthful experiences: Unknown.

· Number of times green was worn by this author to school or anywhere else on the 17th of March: Zero.

· Purported reason for youthful neglect of St. Patrick: Mother Maura never remembered that it was St. Patrick’s Day.

· Proposed real reason for mother Maura’s lapses of memory: Utter rejection of ludicrous American displays of Irishness, expressed through passive/aggressive “forgetfulness”.

· Degree to which mother’s attitudes have influenced her son, this author, expressed in terms of: Not at All, Somewhat, Greatly, Hard to say how much they haven’t, subtly and subconsciously, been of great influence: Which do you think?

Leprechaun

There is a story I tell my literature students, when the topics of stereotypes, prejudice, and racial epithets come up in the classroom. While there is a growing minority presence in the suburban, south of Boston school in which I teach, my students remain the descendents of Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Polish Catholics. Our discussions on race are invariably genuine, thoughtful, very correct, and surreal. What the hell do they know of prejudice?


We have fun. We brainstorm ethnic slurs and stereotypes, and anything Irish or Italian that comes up gives us a big laugh and utterly fails to raise any hackles. “No Irish Need Apply” means nothing to them (if it was ever historically accurate.) “Wop” or “Gumba” are terms that elicit connotations of gangster movies more than they push buttons. Most of my students can’t even produce an Irish slur. They fall back on cereal and soap commercials. Lucky the Frosted Charms leprechaun seems the best they can do.


Along with the fun, I get the sensation that my usually honest classroom, which works hard at keepin’ it real albeit in a relaxed way, has suddenly become a self-conscious and ingenuous caricature of itself. I don’t mean that underneath the humor and the correct attitude, there is a seething prejudice. I mean, the exercise is mostly academic. What a testimony to America: these ethnic Americans before me have no real capacity to appreciate the doubt, the frustration, the despair, and perhaps the sense of group identity, that comes as a result of prejudice. Real prejudice, the assaultive belief that one is inferior, socially, intellectually, morally, based on the inescapabilities of skin color, nationality, or religion. The othering prejudice, the liminalizing: that which ensconces the victim on the outside.


My acute sense of this was awakened after a trip to Ireland that was very different from any of the other thirty or so times I have visited or lived there. Importantly, I was not in the company of my family, but my wife’s. My wife’s grandfather was the only one of eleven siblings to emigrate from Newry, County Down, in the north of Ireland. As a result, the town of Newry, an at times particularly troubled area within the history of the Troubles, is literally teeming with my wife’s close relatives—a fact only belatedly discovered by my in-laws. After an unexpected call from a Newry cousin to my father-in-law, I found myself in enthusiastic tow on an early spring trip to the north of Ireland.


The fact that we were traveling to the North is most important. I had been over the border several times to visit relatives in Fermanagh, without incident. I was always amused at my American friends and their assumptions about Ireland as a war zone. The average American has no reason to distinguish between the six counties and the occasional, terrible reports that have in the past come out of it, and the Republic. In this particular case, my smugness was unfounded, since I had no adult experience with the north, or a place like Newry. But this was 2001, well into the Peace Process, and the truce. And, moreover, my mother-in-law was almost comically worried about the possibility of violence. Her nerves only quieted me in a horribly self-satisfied way. I was genuinely at ease in Ireland, even here.


Martin, my father-in-law’s cousin, took us for a drive in the Mourne mountains. Clusters of rhododendrons amidst unseasonable sunshine made for a perfect spring day. As we were returning home in the long late evening, we came over the rise of a narrow, hedge-lined road. Just beyond the ridge, a patrol of British soldiers cordoned off the road. They were fan out beyond the road, where the hedgerow had ended and flat fields extended on either side. The patrol included a member who carried a gun the size of an M60.


As we rolled to a halt, the soldiers circled the car. I lacked the slightest concern. The truce was in effect. Martin was an innocent. We were American tourists, worthy of scorn in a general way sure, but obviously not a threat. Moreover, all of this would be evident in less than an instant.


The soldiers were young. It struck me. They were nervous. It bothered me. Martin rolled the window down. He and the soldier at the window murmured almost conspiratorially, almost intimately, almost wearily. Not friendily, though. There had been a bomb threat called in. I considered: Martin’s license plate, his last name, his address, any of these might report everything the soldier needed to know. He was a Catholic. Innocent of any wrongdoing, but on the other side for sure. Yes, we were Americans. But weren’t we here visiting our Catholic relatives? Were we the boozy, sentimental, ignorant Americans who sang Kevin Barry and sent money to the freedom fighters, or just generic ignorants? What we were, no matter what, was the Other. Yes, a British Para in Ireland might in fact be the outsider, but we were certainly the others to him. In the glance he gave us, I felt a load of assumptions descend on me.

Inferiority, misunderstanding, anger, confusion, fear, imprisonment

I felt labeled, with conviction, by his eyes. Utterly foreign, utterly belittling, and nervous, his eyes. I did not feel like a cocky, an impervious, even an ignorant American at that moment of scrutiny. I felt insecure, judged, found wanting, due to my . . . blood. The word Teigue out of his mouth would have devastated me, not because I Americanly and fantastically associate myself in romantic and impossible ways with my ancestral connections, but because I felt in his glance that I was connected, in his all-encompassing and stereotyped glance, and that what I was connected to was inferior and hateful, albeit dangerous.


Did his eyes speak this? Am I a Plastic Paddy? A drama queen? How many words should I waste qualifying myself and declaring my awareness of the differences between American, Irish, American Irish, and all the pitfalls of spurious I am Irish associations that the latter constantly make, to the cynical delight or disgust of native Irish? What is this American talking about: that he felt like an oppressed Catholic Northerner? Yes. Yes yes yes yes. I am not one nor think I am. I am not Irish. I know. Blah blah blah. I am not American, for that matter, but that is the subject of another essay. Perhaps the soldier’s thoughts were nothing like what I interpreted. None of this matters. My sensation of what was true is what mattered because, of marginal interest, I intuited what true prejudice feels like, and how debilitating prolonged exposure to it must be.

And because, fabulously more interesting, how empowering it can be.

Empowering, yes. How limiting, but also how straightforward, how easy. Your attitudes, your religion, your beliefs in general, your habits, your identity, your group identity, all neatly to be assumed and summed up by society. To have a tribe! To know who you are, and what you are about! To be wounded by a slur!
Leprechaun? How laughable. No ingenuine and uninformed “Irish” insult has ever bothered me in America, at three years old, or thirty-three.


(At my youngest and before any distinct memory must be a me, as observer. That is, he who has outside knowledge, that is, perspective. My first trip to Ireland was made at six months old, and I was raised by a mother who never assimilated. Leprechaun! Ha ha ha hahaha! The numskulls. A word like that just reminded me of how little they knew. Of how stupid were their ideas of me, or of Irishness. Or how they didn’t know just how much they didn’t know about me. Or about how much more I knew about them. And about us. And about how Leprechaun couldn’t get at me, because I, and it, were so different from what they knew; different yes different and coldly I considered this difference, even at three years yes coldly, between what they knew and what I knew. Coldly, yes, that is, reasonably and distantly considered this difference that kept them from hurting me but rather only reminded me of this: difference.)