Sorry to see the Kennedy camp re-heating this tired old trope about “you just can’t get more Boston or Massachusetts” than (fill-in-the-blank with whatever Irish person/symbol). It's garbage. 1/x

It reinforces a hackneyed image of our Commonwealth as a place where the Irish dominate in business/labor/politics/culture, as though that’s still a thing to aspire to. Every other group here is just as legitimate and just “as Massachusetts” as the Irish, as amazing as we are ;)

You know what’s just as Massachusetts and Boston as the Dropkicks? New Edition! Bell Biv Devoe, Gang Starr, Guru, Bobby Brown, Edo G, Donna Summer.

BTW, if you’re living here in Boston and don’t know any of those names, you’re doin’ it wrong.

Am I calling the Kennedy camp straight-up racist? NO. But, this white-Irish-centric frame is gawd-awful and it’s got to be challenged. It’s great to celebrate one’s roots. But to frame it as though it is or should be the dominant culture here is some real backwards thinking.

I say this as someone who literally owns and edits an Irish American news outlet in Boston— @BostonIrishRptr— in addition to @DotNews. And who harbors no ill-will against the Dropkick Murphys or the Kennedy clan.

This is not just something that the Kennedy camp invented this weekend. It’s a hackneyed frame that I see all the time in media/arts/music/pop culture here.

And I’m over it.

Also: the Irish strangle-hold on organized labor and the political class in the last century might be a point of pride to some. But let’s consider the flip side of that dominance. It meant the exclusion and/or diminishment of many others from their ranks and leadership.

Yes, for full-disclosure: I endorsed Ed Markey in @DotNews last week: https://www.dotnews.com/2020/editorial-markey-senate

For more on how us Boston/Mass Irish can re-think our role to date— and going forward— I’d encourage anyone to check out some of the conversations we’ve helped to convene in recent months w/ groups like @rian_center and @irishnetboston, e.g.

End of screed. -30-