AHA member Una Cadegan, professor of history at the University of Dayton, penned an op-ed in the Washington Post that examines the “myth of immigrant self-reliance,” the notion that early 20th-century Irish and Italian immigrants “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps without ‘any special favors'” and that other racial groups “should do the same.” Cadegan concludes that “rather than reinventing a mythical past about self-reliance, it’s time to pay it forward.”
