Myths are stories-true, unproven or not-from ancient cultures about history, gods, and heroes (Newbury House Dictionary). Ethnic myths, therefore, are true or untrue stories related to group characteristics, such as race, country of origin, religion, or culture.
             African Americans are gang members; Filipinos love potlucks and lumpia; Punjabis are cab drivers; Mexicans live in the ghetto; Chinese are horrible drivers; men can't multi-task; women are emotional; those are all examples of ethnic myths. I can go on, and on, and I would still not be able to run out of things to say about each group, but there is one myth from Steinberg's The Ethnic Myth that I would like to focus on; "The Irish community viewed domestic service favorably, and no ethnic taboos or language barriers prevented Irish women from working in other people's homes" (Myth, 155-156).
             There is a lot of information to consider why this myth exists. Society assumed that "domestic service became the major setting for female urban [labor] force participation during the transitional stages of industrialization" (Myth, 152). People believed that Irish women migrated to the United States as domestics as a stepping-stone for success, that if they start as domestics, they would, later on, be able to get high-ranking jobs. Also, Irish women started off as domestics to indoctrinate them into the values and manners of the middle class (Myth, 152). Thinking that Irish weren't worthy enough to compete with the middle class in an industrial world and that they needed lower-ranking jobs to train themselves, was a false assumption. In the next few paragraphs, I will explain why this is so, meanwhile, another reason why Irish women were domestics was that it would prepare them for marriage. Since they came to the United States unmarried and alone, society assumed that they wanted domestic jobs to practice themselves to be good housewives. Another faulty assumption is that "Although ...