Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
I was talking about Protestant and Irish. Protestants are Christian too you know. Being an Irish Protestant is distinct from being an Irish Catholic. Irish Americans from Protestant backgrounds have different experiences than those who came in from Irish Catholic backgrounds. And in Ireland, being Protestant and being Catholic evolved over time to ethnic identities rather than mainly religious ones. Even atheists would still distinguish between being raised catholic or protestant. Since Peter is Irish Protestants or as they are called in America Scots-Irish (so-called to signify their assimilation as WASPs), that means he's essentially a WASP and was raised as such. Whereas Matt Murdock has a distinct Irish Catholic identity.
Which happened in the '80s. In the context of the '60s, early '60s, when JFK became President, it was seen as a huge win for the Irish Catholic community, and a major milestone in putting a Non-WASP in the white house. By the time Reagan became president it was post-Civil Rights and so on, and such issues weren't as big then.
I mentioned Kennedy because him becoming President overlapped with the beginnings of the Marvel Revolution. At that time, all of DC's heroes were WASP -- Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Clark Kent (okay he's Kryptonian but he was raised and adopted by WASPs). Diana was maybe an exception, her being Greek and a practicing pagan. So within that context, it was pretty interesting for Stan Lee, Ditko, and Kirby to introduce characters who had some real world ethnic ties. Ben Grimm was recognizably Jewish even back then, decades before it became official. Matt Murdock was Irish American, as was Bobby Drake. Peter Parker being Irish was interesting. Of course a lot of Stan's characters were WASPs -- Reed, Sue, Johnny, Tony, Hank Pym, and of course Janet van Dyne with her last name was Old New York Dutch, most of the X-Men (it always amuses me that Marvel's most WASPy team, X-Men, became its least WASP-y team). The major ethnic identity Marvel focused on was Romani and they were mainly villainous -- Dr. Doom, Pietro, Wanda (the latter two got reformed by the end of the decade, and Doom's Romani heritage is now used to frame him sympathetically).