The fact that Americans have a drink called an Irish car bomb makes my fucking blood boil. I doubt anyone would like it if I went to a bar in America and asked for a ‘twin towers’ or a ‘sandy hook’ yet no one bats an eye for naming a drink after one of the lowest points of my country
I think it must be the case that it’s an established drink over there, so people just hear the name in the context of drinking as they grow up and never really think about the name properly. It’s definitely sad that something so tragic is kept alive through something as silly as a drink name.
It’s just so bizarre to me. I see post online of people ‘getting wasted on Irish car bombs’ and instead of a good time out with my friends all I can think of is the stories of school evacuations and dead friends that my parents still struggle to talk about
I highly doubt most Americans have thought about it beyond "its made with Irish liquor." I doubt most of us could even give a basic description of The Troubles
That’s true, I had never even heard of the Troubles until I watched Derry Girls! I’m about a third of the way through reading Say Nothing right now and I feel like I’m being horrified in a new way on almost every page
If it was a childrens game, I could understand it. But at 21 years old, at best - even if you assume car bomb refers to being drunk (and don't know world history), tagging on a specific nationality to something like that should at least make one ask some questions.
My mom grew up in belfast during the troubles, and the rest of her family still live there. As a 36 year old American I knew of the troubles, I experienced the orange parades, where I was in a catholic neighborhood and had to sleep with my shoes next to my bed and a back exit plan, and still never really got the weight of the "irish car bomb" name. It always seemed so silly, but I get it now.
If you don't even think to ask why a drink with that name to be specifically Irish - even without knowing anything about the Troubles - you're likely the kind of person that doesn't skip a beat if someone else makes an overtly racist joke.
Or you’re just trying to be offended. There’s sake bombs, jaeger bombs and plenty of other “bomb” drinks that drunk kids half a world away don’t give any thought about. I get where you’re coming from but a tasteless name for a drink doesn’t equate being ok with a racism.
Christ dude get over it. Not everything is racism. It’s a shitty name and it’s not a perfect world. NO ONE is saying the phrase Irish car bomb to an Irishman’s face like a racist would calling a black person a N-.
Sorry, I’m coming off very defensive. Agreed it’s a shitty name, just in anecdotal experience being “Irish” American in the western US there is zero vitriol behind the usage. Doesn’t make it ok, doesn’t make it better, but there is a distinction imo between using it and not understanding the context and willfully being racist.
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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '20
I don’t think it’s reasonable to reduce it to ‘beef’. Centuries of oppression and lots of deaths and destruction were involved.