Colonial Celtic Culture: Racism

     Different cultures from the past have built modern cultures, America being a more obvious example of a culture melding pot. One of many colonies whose culture still affects our world today is the Celts.

     The Celts were violent and clannish, but they were also full of merriment and spent time working hard, they contributed a lot to southern culture. However, there are two sides to every coin, while southern culture is often seen to be a good hardworking nature, Celtic culture had negative effects in other areas in North America.

     This was largely due to slavery. Slaves were taken from all different parts of Africa, came from different cultures, and often the slaves had language barriers among each other. This meant that slaves navigated life by learning the culture, customs, and languages of their new home in America. This is why black people often don’t have black culture, they have Celtic culture.

     When first colonizing America, institutional racism was large, especially in the Carolinas, which was at the time part of Virginia. However, the slave owners focused on the institutional aspect rather than the racist aspect, they did not care about their slave’s skin color, they weren’t acting racist, they cared far more about how much their slave got done that day.

     It was after the Civil War when the ex slaves started moving around the country looking for jobs and new homes it was mostly about race. The North was not used to having slaves before, so they weren’t used to black people now. This caused the Jim Crow laws.

     The North started the Jim Crow laws, segregated bathrooms, sundown towns, etc, the South simply hopped on board, and was less strict about this sort of thing. During this time, ex-slaves were overcoming the violence and clannish nature of their culture from their old homes, along with the racism from the North. As they were spreading out through the country between 1890 and 1960 the more industrious acts of their culture began to grow and the less violent and clannish.

     Unfortunately, Obama egged racism on. He preached that all white people were forever racist because of their old culture, and black people were forever victims for the same reason. This stirred the pot, especially in the culture. Finally, the welfare state happened.

     All the black people who moved up North had spent a long time navigating the world through different cultures intermingling with the Southern, and had worked hard to keep tradition alive, even if it wasn’t their own, while filtering out the violence from Celts, such as bride stealing and using dirt from old bath water to season food.

     But when the welfare state came into play, there was no more social pressure to conserve the good and get rid of the rest. Stereotypical black gangs and rappers and a political rather than studious culture is what came of this. The old violence from Celts turned into gangs and sketchy, predominantly black, neighborhoods. The culture was evolving into something industrious, but these days a Jamaican who just moved to New York is often better off and more studious than those who were helped by the welfare state.

     It is important to conserve old culture and tradition, while learning from your culture what those before got wrong. Interfering destroys the evolution of tradition, and tears down the point of conservatism. Tradition is good, even if not everything your ancestors practiced was good, putting a barrier between people and why they need to improve themselves destroys culture.