Gangs of New York

Is Bill the Butcher a racist, or something else?

It was a rare combination. I had the afternoon off and I was home alone. I thought I would find a good movie on TV and get away from it all for a couple hours. Just a good story that would transport me to a different place for a while, where there were no chores, no schoolbooks, no work deadlines. I chose Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York because I remembered thinking it was a great movie, but I had seen it only once, a long time ago, and could recall only blurry details… plus it happened to be coming on one of the movie channels in just a few minutes. What I didn’t expect was to see a tale so bound up with one of the earliest important struggles for racial acceptance in the history of the United States.

The movie opens with a huge battle between rival gangs over control of a New York neighborhood, circa 1840. “We are met at this chosen ground to settle for good and all who holds sway over the Five Points — us Natives, born rightwise to this fine land, or the foreign hordes defiling it.” So announces Bill The Butcher, leader of the English Protestant “Natives,” and sworn nemesis of the immigrant Irish “hordes” then beginning to pour into the country, pushed out of Ireland by famine and discrimination, and pulled to America by exaggerations of a “land of golden opportunity.”

The story goes on to depict the continuing struggle of key Irish characters to rise above poverty and prejudice through whatever means necessary, including prostitution, crime, corruption and extreme violence. Of course, there are exaggerations in the movie as well. But, as historian Ted Chamberlain noted, “The overall theme of the movie Scorsese gets exactly right: When the Irish first came to America they were persecuted, and they literally did have to fight for their fair share of what America had to offer.”

One of the things that makes this theme so compelling is that the Irish eventually did get a share of what America has to offer. In some ways, their story would seem to be the very prototype of assimilation theories. Irish Americans have gone from being stereotyped by white society as non-white, apelike drunkards, to being a largely indistinguishable part of white society itself. Now, sociologists Joe and Clairece Feagin, in their textbook Racial and Ethnic Relations, write, “Is there an Irish American identity today?” And just the fact that it’s a legitimate question speaks of an amazing journey and transformation. But, even as the Feagins note that “each generation of Irish Americans has become ever more incorporated into the core Anglocentric institutions,” they also point out that “many assimilation analysts tend to neglect…the substantial conflict and discrimination that have characterized the experiences” of the Irish in America.

The Feagins write that “some power-conflict theorists specifically omit immigrant groups such as ‘white ethnics’ like the Irish Americans from the analyses,” and that seems like an oversight to me, or at least a missed opportunity. It seems to me that the prejudice and discrimination against the Irish is especially interesting specifically because of their “white ethnic” status. The kind of entrenched hatred we see from Bill the Butcher is based on so little actual difference — the English and the Irish were both Christian, white, and came to America from neighboring islands with overlapping cultures.

This presents a question of racialization that might point to power-conflict theories, especially in the case of Bill and other Anglo-Protestants of his day. In one scene, Bill and the infamous Boss Tweed are both at the docks watching Irish immigrants come ashore. Bill leads the Nativists in hurling insults and rotting fruit at the cowed Irish, while Tweed welcomes each one as a potential vote for his political machine. “That’s the building of our country right there,” says Tweed, “Americans aborning.” And Bill the Butcher says, “I don’t see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for nickel what a nigger does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for.” This piece of dialogue reveals the underlying economic issue in the dynamic between the Nativists and the Irish. Once again, the relentless drive for cheap labor inherent in capitalism leads to conflict between the “lowest” working classes, and then to various rationalizations for prejudice and discrimination, and finally to repression, hatred and violence.

In the end of the film, Bill the Butcher, the villainous embodiment of anti-immigrant sentiment, is killed out of vengeance by the Irish American hero, the surviving son of an old vanquished foe. It’s clear that Bill’s America is fading, and that the Irish will be a part of the country’s future. And in the end of the real story, I think the assimilation of the Irish into American society is also a hopeful tale. It reminds us that racism — and race itself — is purely a cultural construct, not supported by any real biological differences between people of different societies. Therefore these concepts or perceptions are subject to change.

But it’s not an easy journey, and there are other factors besides simply time and familiarity. Although a range of assimilation concepts can be seen as applying to the Irish American journey, one of the key factors, according to the Feagins, was that “they entered the urban economy when expanding industries needed large numbers of low-wage workers.” When economic inequality is less of a factor, assimilation seems to be more of a possibility. Perhaps that is a lesson for the future.

Work Cited

Chamberlain, Ted. “Gangs of New York: Fact or Fiction.” National Geographic News.

Cocks, Jay. “Gangs of New York.” Dir. Martin Scorsese. Santa Monica: Miramax, 2003.

Feagin, Joe R. & Feagin, Clairece Booher. Racial and Ethnic Relations. Ninth Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2011.