Washington Post - American women weren’t the only ones slighted when Jeb Bush chose a British woman to be the first female on U.S. paper currency. He also offended the second largest ancestry in the United States: Irish Americans.
[The Irish-American population is seven times larger than Ireland]
Asked at the GOP debate Wednesday night which woman should appear on the $10 bill, Bush apparently could not quickly think of any influential woman from American history. Instead, he picked Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, because she “restored the United Kingdom to greatness.”
On Friday morning, IrishCentral.com, published an article: “Jeb Bush insults Irish by picking Margaret Thatcher for the $10 bill.”
Thatcher is remembered as a top nemesis of the Irish during the British government’s conflict with Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Irish nationalists blame her for letting 10 political prisoners die during a hunger strike.
“To put such a woman on an American banknote would be the greatest insult possible to the millions of Irish Americans who trace their roots to fleeing famine, war and persecution and religious bigotry – something akin to what the American forces faced when fighting for independence the same way the Irish did,” the IrishCentral.com article says.
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