My mums irish, the irish were at one time thought as 2/3rds of an english person, that was even enshrined in law, They were known as the nikkas of the british empire, who along with the scots, did a lot of the fighitng for the empire , alongside working class englishmen because all there was at home for them was abject poverty and disease. They fought and died for the very regime that oppressed them,
I also believe the irish got treated like shyt when they first migrated to the states. The irish american has no room to look down on an african american, in fact historically there are parallels in terms of how they were treated , read about the black and tans... In fact the british treated their indian commonwealth tropps and muslim troops better than the irish. The irish were known as 'bog wogs' and 'bog trotters' .
This reminds me, of how when there was the troubles in northern island, the most brutal british army regiments, were not the english ones,but the scottish ones because the scots had quite a chip on their shoulder and saw themselves as better than the irish,especially the irish catholics.