With the ideology of white supremacy manifested in society, mainly through labour discrimination and an artificial racial hierarchy, many Irish immigrants tried to move into mainstream American society on the basis of their skin color. To be American was to be white according to the dominant line of thought, so the Irish actively promoted their skin color as a way to assimilate into society. “Targets of Protestant nativist hatred identifying them as Catholic, outsiders, and foreigners, the Irish newcomers sought to become insiders, or Americans, by claiming their membership as whites” (Takaki 143). The Irish were successful in assimilating into American society also in part due to their adoption of the anti-black attitudes that the dominant group of the era (rich, white men) held. They regarded the blacks with disgust and contempt, actively opposed black suffrage and condemned “abolitionism as ‘Niggerology’”…