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When studying the emergence and development of racial ideology in nineteenth century America, the Irish make for a particularly interesting case study. The droves of Irish Catholics immigrants departing a home land in which they were a subject race ruled over by the English and Irish Protestants were by no means welcomed with open arms in the United States. Many Americans viewed them as little different from African slaves. Terms like “white negroes” and “smoked Irish” highlighted the lack of significance an Irish Catholic’s skin color held to many native-born Americans. Largely poor and unskilled laborers, Irish Catholics were forced to take only the most menial of jobs. Given the common experiences of ethnic and economic oppression shared by both Irish Catholics and black slaves, abolitionists of the period thought the Irish would be natural allies in the battle to end chattel slavery in America. Instead, the exact opposite proved true. In ''How the Irish Became White'', Noel Ignatiev argues that in the United States, Irish Catholics found an opportunity to shed their status as an oppressed race in their native land and join the oppressor class in their new home. As he puts it, “In becoming white, the Irish ceased to be green,” (3).