Anonymous #2 17w

Knew there had to be something out there

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Anonymous #3 17w

That theory was based on work by a race scientist. It’s rooted less in reality than scientific racism. Be weary of it. -an anthropologist who did her thesis on southern Appalachia

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Anonymous #4 16w

Do you have a source for that? It seems like the theory comes from a pair of social psychologists (Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen) in the mid 1990’s and I can’t find evidence that either of them were racist.

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Anonymous #3 16w

It’s more about the sources they use. 100% I don’t think the authors realized they were doing this, but most of their assertions about Scots Irish as a cultural group trace back to really nasty ideas about the Irish in the 19th and early 20th centuries, back when the Irish were considered to be kind of on the peripheries of whiteness, and by many to just not be white. Basically English colonial stereotypes of a violent/poor/impulsive Irishperson

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Anonymous #4 16w

I think it’s a situation where because they’re psychologists and not anthropologists or historians, they weren’t totally aware of the antecedents of anti-Irish sentiments and didn’t take that or class stereotypes into account in the way someone from either of those disciplines or say, a sociologist would. It would have benefited greatly from more interdisciplinary consultation or collaboration

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Anonymous #4 16w

It’s also been called into question methodologically

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Anonymous #4 16w

“based on work by a race scientist” to “some academics question the methodology” is a huge jump.

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Anonymous #3 16w

I said they *also* question methodology, I didn’t say that was the only or even main reason it’s based in race science. You basically ignored the main portion of what I said

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Anonymous #4 16w

There’s about 150 years worth of people trying to prove that Irish people are scientifically more violent and irrational than other European groups that’s very easy to find. It’s a clear intellectual antecedent to this research, which as I said, hasn’t been replicated, because it’s based in stereotypes rather than actual behavior

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