Why are the BLACK Donnellys WHITE and Not BLACK ...?

Question

Isn't that Racist!!!

Answer 1

Hey you are racist because used the word Bl**ck

Answer 2

black in this case does not mean race... Black Irish is a traditional term given to a dark brown or black hair person of Irish descent. It can be distinguished in contrast to the (lighter) brown, blond or red hair color variant that many Irish people have. Inspired by a myth that claims the darker features to be of Iberian derivation, some have looked to science for answers, often citing genetic studies pertaining to those with Irish (and/or British) ancestry. This is seen as a means of determining what genotypic and environmental factors have contributed to the divergence between the more or less prevalent types found among Irish people. (So, these Donnellys all have black hair (ok not exactly but theyre not red headed) so can thus be known as the Black Donnellys.. nothing to do with race

Answer 3

Black Donnellys is the common nickname of the Donnelly family; a family that emigrated from County Tipperary, Ireland, to Canada in about 1845-1846, and who participated in a notorious feud.Catholic Whiteboys, Protestant Orangemen, and Blackfeet. Blackfeet were Irish Catholics who refused to adhere to the rigid Whiteboy code and were severely mistreated by the Whiteboys for their perceived treason. The Donnellys were Blackfeet and thus caught in the middle between the Catholic/Protestant battles.

Answer 4

Ha-ha!
no, its not racist.
they are "black irish"
it refers to dark-haired irish people that may or may not have descended from gypsies, or more appropriately, the Roma.

According to the straight dope.com:
The Black Irish seem to be mainly a U.S. thing. The Irish natives I've heard from say the term is new to them.

People talk about the Black Irish as though they constituted a mythical race on a par with the lost tribes of Israel. But in fact all they mean (usually) is that somebody named McNulty has dark, and in the classic case black, hair.

Even if we make the dubious assumption that dark hair genes were completely absent in the original Gaels, it seems likely that the incidence of dark-haired folk in a nation whose population only slightly exceeds that of the city of Los Angeles could be accounted for strictly by routine mixing due to immigration, trade contact, and so on.

But you can see how exciting an explanation that makes. So people have come up with all kinds of fanciful tales instead.

The wildest notion is that black hair is evidence of Spaniards marooned in Ireland following the wreck of the Armada. As we've had occasion to discuss in the past, the number of shipwrecked Spanish sailors who remained in Ireland for any length of time was trivial.

I have also heard it said the black Irish were the first settlers of Ireland--maybe the Phoenicians. The red Irish, meanwhile, were descendants of the Normans, and the blond Irish are descended from the Vikings. One of many drawbacks to this theory is that it seems to leave the Gaels completely out of the picture.

A more plausible but still essentially unprovable take on this idea is that black hair is a vestige of an indigenous population of short dark-haired types overrun by the fair-haired Gaels. Supposedly there are more black Irish in the western part of the country, which fewer Gaelic invaders reached.
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Some people think this term may have something to do with the potato famine in Ireland.

from wikipedia:
A lesser-known point of origin refers to the potato famine of 1845-1851, which turned the blighted potatoes black and as a result drove thousands of Irish to America's shores. [14]

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ethnicity and potatoes aside,
the color black has typically been used to describe things as dark, terrible, ect. The black plague, etc. its a symbolism thing.

Answer 5

Honeybunny it's television. They can do what ever they want. I mean that's like the movie Meet Joe Black. Dude was white. It's not racist just a play on words and publicity. If you really want to break something down. Then lets try to make sense of commercials being more entertaining then the show's themselves. Don't get steamed about it. It's just t.v.

Answer 6

black Donnellys refers to the color of there hair, and the belief that they are descended from gypsy blood.

Answer 7

it's not racist. it means the hair color. watch the first episode on nbc.com and joey icecream explains it.

Answer 8

It's suspicious.