Here's some of the figures in percentages of residents who were happy to have 'Irish' listed as their primary ancestral group back in in 2007:
* 1. Boston, 18.87 percent
* 2. Albany, 15.92 percent
* 3. Philadelphia, 14.60 percent
* 4. Providence, 12.23 percent
* 5. Bridgeport-Stamford, Conn., 11.69 percent
* 6. New Haven, Conn., 11.56 percent
* 7. Hartford, 11.45 percent
* 8. Buffalo, 11.23 percent
* 9. Pittsburgh, 10.74 percent
* 10. Rochester, N.Y., 9.86 percent
* 11. Kansas City, 9.66 percent
* 12. Tampa-St. Petersburg, 9.65 percent
* 13. Cleveland, 9.43 percent
* 14. Baltimore, 9.14 percent
* 15. Cincinnati, 9.05 percent
* 16. St. Louis, 8.73 percent
* 17. Indianapolis, 8.61 percent
* 18. Columbus, 8.59 percent
* 19. Jacksonville, 8.50 percent
* 20. Chicago, 8.19 percent
* 21. Nashville, 8.04 percent
* 22. Portland, Ore., 7.67 percent
* 23. New York City, 7.64 percent
* 24. Denver, 7.41 percent
* 25. Seattle, 7.41 percent
* 26. Minneapolis-St. Paul, 7.14 percent
* 27. Washington, 6.84 percent
* 28. Sacramento, 6.74 percent
* 29. Detroit, 6.70 percent
* 30. Richmond, 6.51 percent
All of the above (& the rest) adds up to 22.6 million Americans claiming Irish as their primary ancestry, which is great makes me happy to be part of something that big, that global, that important, and if we include the UK, 35.5% of their 62 million population is Irish or of Irish descent too. Even Bigger !!
That's almost another 22 million. So including some other major territories like Australia where we can add another 2 million or so, add too Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Spain (where we also fought for independence on their behalf )add the majority of South American counties with some paddys at large, Mexico, and bits of Norway, Finland, Sweden, Japan, China, everywhere you could raise a glass, dance a jig, recite a poem, sing a song, grow a spud, or dig a hole until we get, a global Irish ancestry population of approx 60 Million. Now I'm a very insignificant part of a very significant whole.
Which of course is doubly interesting since only about 6 million or 1 tenth of that number of people currently live in Ireland, that's north, south and others born elsewhere.
Anecdotally that resident 6 million is made up of US multinational software and medical device executives, visiting German, Chinese, Korean Academics, The Italians, dutch, Hungarian Call centre workers, the lots and lots of English and British People who just got feed up of England and Britain.
Lots of Polish people who started as economic migrants and stayed because they discovered we were very like them in a not Russian, nor German nor American nor even British way. The Latvians who followed the Polish. There are also lots of refugees and Asylum seekers that arrived when the Celtic tiger was roaring the cash away, many from Africa, adding another rhythmic twist to our cultural beats, and adding additional skin and vocal tones to our future linguistic diversity of slanguage and gugg id da bugg id ah.
Apart from our once colonial conquers, we never did get around to starting a serious fight with anyone but ourselves. We spent a lot of time, reading writing and (sorta) peacefully spreading the word across the global stage, even if we did on occasion get drunk when we finished spouting it all.
All of which creates a strange dichotomy, what is it that is now the essence of Irishness ? I mean diddley Idle in China and River dancing and Shouting Stout and the Irish way of a lilt of love for langauge, out revivalist 'techno smart-arsery' its all still there, or rather here, and our culture is being enriched by daily additions to it, but the old begrudger in us still lives on, that J.B. Keane 'my field' materialism that ran rampant throughout the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger, it still grabs and grasps and backhands and winks and nudges in the dark and hidden corner of our little business world, but a few greedy bastards in the banks and builders winked and backhanded too much, they fanned the incentive culture, messed their vision from far too much winking, like in so many other parts of the world, until it became an insensitive culture flaming out of control, driven only by profit, numbers and personal welfare, the Irish 'cute whures' found themselves mauled by a dying Celtic tiger and abandoned to their own obsolete development plans for world domination. Good enough for them and the wasters that facilitated it.
That most Irish of Traditions, the Wake, is now where we can find ourselves, watching the economic pointers go south, watching share price collapse, witnessing 'loss of value' for shareholders, listening to the whinging taxi drivers yet again, point scoring politicians trading insults and blame, ejets of economists claiming they were warning us all along, we're at the wake for the celtic tiger and all the banshee crying and whinging is going on all around and from all quarters, but like any real wake, its supposed to be about the celebration of the person's life, their achievements, how they enriched the lives of others, not with cash or investments but merely by there presence and human input, the tiger's wake is a little less human, some of us are just glad he's finally kicked the bucket.
Yes personally I am genuinely glad the tiger is dead, as one who didn't get sucked into its claws of greed in the first place, I feel justified in my choices to remain apart from it. I am proud to be Irish, whatever being Irish today means to so many millions of people, I know what it means to be me, I know that despite others adding labels and the rise and fall of economic animals, I can still feel good about who I am and the tribe to which I apparently belong, I play with my Irish kids, I read Irish Books, I eat Irish Food, I walk Irish Streets, I listen to Irish Stories, I live an Irish Life and I'm happy to be me and an Irish me at that, Happy to be Irish on a Happy St Patrick's Day.
The one thing that I know all 60 million of us have in common is, we want to be Happy.
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