February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Drill instructors from the marines teach freshly minted naval officers the ropes, both figuratively and literally.
“What did he say?” I whispered to a classmate with prior enlisted service in the navy.
“No Irish pennants!” he hissed.
“I heard him, but what is an Irish pennant?” I replied, now trying to whittle down the long list of new phrases I could barely process.
My African-American classmate looked me over, grabbed the end of a tiny thread peeking out from under a seam on my shirt and pulled it hard.
Grasping the tiny wisp of khaki between thumb and index finger, he offered it proudly for my inspection.
“That, he explained, “is an Irish pennant.”
Primed by the “Cultural Sensitivity for Naval Officers” class we had just concluded, I pressed forward.
“What the hell does that mean, gunny?” I demanded of our keeper.
“It means you don’t look squared away with trash hanging off your uniform, sir” he responded, walking away.
Later that afternoon, at a question and answer panel with senior officers, I raised the issue again.
I asked the origin of the phrase and offered the strong opinion that the usage was necessarily derogatory, regardless of any perceived innocent origins.
The origin, I was assured, was, uh, well, lost in antiquity, but the navy and marine corps have always called unsightly threads Irish pennants and it was broadly accepted, universally understood, and was definitely “harmless.”
Over the next ten years, I missed no opportunity to raise the issue in every command in which I served. The warmest reception my concerns ever received was an indulgent smile and the explanation that “the Irish don’t take offense, come on, it’s like a joke. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Ah, yes, the cheerful Irish American who can take a joke. I remember well fireside conversations with my elder relatives when I was a child, speaking about that expectation.
I am now a retired USN Medical Corps reservist who takes a few weeks of vacation from my regular job every year to work at a large naval medical center to replace active duty docs who need leave time.
While working there a few weeks ago, the issue came back to me anew when I heard a young ensign and a chief petty officer once again discussing Irish pennants as they prepared for a command inspection.
The usage, while probably “innocent” in many senses of the word, is nonetheless actually demeaning, derogatory, discriminatory, and hurtful, as I see it and hear it.
I remain shocked as an American with an Irish heritage that this obviously negative term would be associated with the Irish.
I have researched the etymological roots of the phrase and learned that it originated in the British navy of the 1800s.
There, the original connotation was that an “Irish pennant” was a threadbare or frayed rope or halyard, or an unsecured, untidy rope end hanging without purpose from a ship’s rigging.
Both the context and the history of 18th and 19th century British-Irish cultural, religious, and political relationships can leave no doubt that the intent of the phrase was to convey general disrespect to the Irish by associating sloppy seamanship with them.
Today, this slur remains fully institutionalized throughout the Department of the Navy. The phrase appears in writing on uniform inspection checklists and is used at all times at all levels to refer to sloppy, untrimmed threads left on a uniform.
The phrase is used in NROTC inspections on college campuses nationwide, and appears without apology in every edition of “The Bluejacket’s Manual,” which teaches the ropes to each new generation of seamen.
Although I trust the significance of this improper use of a derogatory reference to national origin will not be lost on readers of the Irish Echo, I will risk belaboring the point by reminding the reader that calling the unsightly, non-shipshape, not-squared-away threads by any other national, ethnic, geopolitical, or anthropological reference would immediately be recognized by most among us as insensitive, inappropriate, and as a behavior which probably would earn a reprimand from superiors in any work environment.
To me, referring to the unacceptable dangling threads as “Chinese pigtails”, “Peruvian pennants” “Latino lanyards,” “Israeli extension cords,” or “African fringes” could not be any more offensive than is the phrase “Irish pennants.”
Long use and tradition do not justify this remarkably insensitive transgression any more than one could hope to justify the longstanding racial discrimination in the U.S. military through World War II by invoking the fact that the discrimination was institutionalized and broadly accepted for more than a century.
I have asked the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of the Navy (NAVIG) to investigate this usage and have asked also for nothing less than the complete abolition of this obnoxious phrase from all matters within the Department of the Navy. I have suggested it be replaced in all written and verbal communication with the more than adequate “loose threads” or “untrimmed threads.”
Having received no response from NAVIG, I invite readers to share their perspectives on this issue with their consulate, elected representatives, or with NAVIG.
Dr. Poulton, Professor of Pediatrics and Surgery (Anesthesiology) Cabell Huntington Hospital Huntington, West Virginia, in his own words, pursues lessons from history and relentlessly tilts at windmills. He can be reached at tpoulton@gmail.com