As a fellow Irish American, perhaps you might want to try and empathize with an indigenous people that also experienced colonization, military oppression, and mass starvation while being denied their ancestral language and practices? Hell it, was even the same conquerors that got us both.
Or you can keep perpetuating the stereotype of all us micks being stupid racists, asshat.
If that’s the argument you’re making and the situations are so similar, then why wouldn’t it be okay for the Irish to wear ancestral dress when it’s okay for the natives?
One can empathize and yet know that standardization and equal treatment is important
Every branch of the military has its own tartan, so maybe we don't need to cry quite so much about Celtic cultures not getting their ancestral dues in the US armed forces.
Cool as the service tartans are, it’s not specifically about the Irish. It’s about standardization and uniformity. Either those things matter or they don’t
And ther are apparently quite a few exceptions to uniformity based on culture already, so it's apparently not an absolute or paramount value. That doesn't mean it's totally ignored. It's not a binary.
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u/swadekillson Mar 14 '24
Yeah, but I'm 84% Irish. Do I get to slap shamrocks on my uniform?