This Youtube video of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem brings tears to my eyes. I’m proud to be of Irish descent. My Mom raised me that way. Mom’s Irish aunts actually thought that Jesus was Irish. How’s that for ethnocentrism? Today, where I work, dozens of children and most of my co-workers are wearing some green for the day. Many are not Irish, but wear the green because it is St. Patrick’s Day. But it wasn’t always like that. When the Irish first emigrated in droves to the United States, they were not welcome. In fact signs hung in cities that proclaimed, “Irish need not apply.” It’s okay to be Irish today in the United States of America. Only recently we elected our first African-American President. It took African-Americans a bit longer to be accepted and that no doubt had to do with the color of their skin. Americans aren’t alone when it comes to rejecting and persecuting the foreigner or the outsider.
All of this gives me hope that one day we’ll accept everybody that God created and just the way they were created and not how we’d like them to be. That’s my wish and along with that I’d like to share this wonderful Youtube video of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem singing “Brennan on the Moor.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aiKUIm8q_c]