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Title: Under Your Skin
Review: Ignatiev tells the tangled, tattered history of Irish-black relations in America in the 30 years or so leading up to the Civil War. It shows how the Irish used labor unions and the Democratic Party to elevate themselves in the stratified American republic. At first, the white protestant majority in America made little distinction between Irish immigrants and free blacks -- it scorned them both. But by emphasizing racism, leaders of the Irish-American community were able to swing themselves over to the side of the dominant class, to the horror of their brethren in Ireland, who identified the slaves' struggles for emancipation with their own battles against English rule.
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