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{{This|the cultural ethnonym|Wasp (disambiguation)}}
{{This|the cultural ethnonym|Wasp (disambiguation)}}

'''WASP''' stands for '''White Anglo-Saxon Protestant'''. It is an informal term used in the United States and Canada<ref>Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine, ''Guide to Canadian English Usage'' (2008) pp 517-8</ref> in reference to an ethnic elite with high social status and presumed power. The term excludes Catholics, Jews, blacks, Hispanics and Asians. It is used to identify an elite of upper class, well-educated Protestants. "WASP" is usually used in disparaging fashion to imply the author's disapproval of the group's excessive power. "Anglo-Saxon" refers to the [[Old English]] language and since the 19th century has been in common use in the U.S. to refer to England and people of English descent. In contrast, [[Yankee]] refers to New Englanders of English descent, regardless of social status, while WASP includes high status white Southerners.<ref> More generally, Southerners in the U.S. call all Northerners "Yankees", and people outside the U.S. call all Americans "Yankees" or "Yanks.''"</ref>
'''WASP''' stands for '''White Anglo-Saxon Protestant'''. Whoever initially wrote this is deeply ino propaganda as the English are not of the Saxon lineage as they claim. They are of a Latin or rather Celtic lineage but for some strange envious reason, they have been purporting to have a direct and significant connection to the Germanic tribes. In reality, a very few Germanic and Nordic mercenaries had been in contact with the UK but this induction of their DNA was of the same maginitude as the white mxing with the Blacks during the days of slavery. The Saxon influence is so diluted to render the British, especially the English, as what they truly are, a mix bag of Latin crossbreeds.


People seldom call themselves WASPs, except humorously; the term is typically used by outsiders, most often with a negative undertone, and many dictionaries warn against its casual usage.<ref>Allen (1975)</ref><ref>Allen (1990)</ref>
People seldom call themselves WASPs, except humorously; the term is typically used by outsiders, most often with a negative undertone, and many dictionaries warn against its casual usage.<ref>Allen (1975)</ref><ref>Allen (1990)</ref>

Revision as of 13:52, 11 June 2010

This article is about the cultural ethnonym. For Wasp (disambiguation), see White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (disambiguation).

WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Whoever initially wrote this is deeply ino propaganda as the English are not of the Saxon lineage as they claim. They are of a Latin or rather Celtic lineage but for some strange envious reason, they have been purporting to have a direct and significant connection to the Germanic tribes. In reality, a very few Germanic and Nordic mercenaries had been in contact with the UK but this induction of their DNA was of the same maginitude as the white mxing with the Blacks during the days of slavery. The Saxon influence is so diluted to render the British, especially the English, as what they truly are, a mix bag of Latin crossbreeds.

People seldom call themselves WASPs, except humorously; the term is typically used by outsiders, most often with a negative undertone, and many dictionaries warn against its casual usage.[1][2]

An upper class factor is implicit, so that working class whites are not called WASPs. In the 21st century, fewer than 25% of the American population is of English descent, yet they continue to have disproportionate influence over major American institutions, especially cultural, educational, business and financial ones.[3]

Origin of term

The term was popularized by sociologist and University of Pennsylvania professor E. Digby Baltzell in his 1964 book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America[4]

Imprecision

Sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey noted the impreciseness of usage.

The term WASP has many meanings. In sociology it reflects that segment of the U.S. population that founded the nation and traced their heritages to ... Northwestern Europe The term... has become more inclusive. To many people, WASP now include most 'white' people who are not... members of any minority group.[5]

WASPs vary in religion, from secular to mainline Protestant to Fundamentalist. Catholics, Mormons and Jews are not considered WASPs, nor are people of Hispanic or Asian descent. In the western and southwestern U.S., "Anglo" is often used to contrast Americans of European ancestry from Hispanics of Mexican ancestry.[6]

Culture attributed to WASPs

The original WASP establishment, created, and dominated the social structure of the United States and its significant institutions when the country's social structure took shape in the 17th century until the 20th century. Many scholars, including researcher Anthony Smith, argue that nations tend to be formed on the basis of a pre-modern ethnic core that provides the myths, symbols, and memories for the modern nation and that WASPs were indeed that core.[7]

WASPs still are prominent at prep schools (expensive private high schools, primarily in the Northeast) and Ivy League universities and prestigious liberal arts colleges, such as Amherst, Williams, Trinity, Middlebury, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby colleges. Those colleges are overwhelmingly meritocratic, but still favor "legacy" alumni. Students learned skills, habits, and attitudes and formed connections which carried over to the influential spheres of finance, culture, and politics.[8]

WASP families, particularly the affluent upper-class, are sometimes stereotyped as pursuing traditional British diversions such as squash, golf, tennis, equestrianism, croquet, polo, and yachting--expensive pursuits that served as a marker of affluence. Social registers and society pages listed the privileged, who mingled in the same private clubs, attended the same churches, and lived in neighborhoods — Philadelphia's Main Line and Chestnut Hill neighborhoods, New York City's Upper East Side, Park Slope, Brooklyn, or Central Park West; Boston's Beacon Hill and Georgetown, Washington D.C. are fine examples. Also they may live in smaller wealthy communities like Cape Cod; Martha's Vineyard; Nantucket; Greenwich, Connecticut; Newport, Rhode Island; Kennebunkport, Maine and The Hamptons near Montauk, New York.[9]

Fading dominance

It was not until after World War II that the networks of privilege and power in the old Protestant establishment began to lose significance. Many reasons have been attributed to the WASP decline and books have been written detailing it.[10]] Among the reasons often cited is increased competitive pressure as the WASPs themselves opened the doors to competition. The GI Bill brought higher education to the children of other groups , and the postwar era created ample economic opportunity for a growing new middle class. Nevertheless, white Protestants remain represented in the country's cultural, political, and economic élite.[11]

In the federal service, once dominated by WASPs--especially the State Department--Catholics and Jews made strong inroads after 1945. Georgetown University, a Catholic school, made a systematic effort to place graduates in diplomatic career tracks, while Princeton University (a WASP bastion), got into trouble with donors because too few of its graduates were entering careers in the federal government.[12] By 2000 there were roughly equal proportions of WASPs and Jews at the elite levels of the federal civil service.[13]

If Elena Kagan's nomination is confirmed, it will be the first time the U.S. Supreme Court is without a Protestant member.[14]

While the white Protestant establishment is no longer the sole elite group in American society, it remains a significant presence throughout the nation. The University of California, Berkeley, once a WASP stronghold, has changed radically. Only 30% of its undergraduates in 2007 were of European origin (including WASPs and all other Europeans), with 63% of undergraduates from immigrant families, especially from Asia.[15]

The shifting of a significant portion of American economic activity and wealth to the Sun Belt during the latter part of the 20th century, as well as the advent of a more globalized economy, can also be attributed as contributing to the "decline" of the Eastern-based WASP establishment.

WASPs were major players in the Republican Party. Politicians such as Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts, Prescott Bush of Connecticut, and Nelson Rockefeller of New York exemplified the liberal Republicanism of their social stratum, espousing internationalist views on foreign policy, supporting social programs, and holding progressive views on issues like racial integration and birth control. Catholics in the Northeast and the Midwest, usually Irish- or Italian-American dominated Democratic party politics in big cities through the ward boss system. Catholic (or "white ethnic") politicians failed to find favor among WASP voters even in the liberal Northeast.[16]

A famous confrontation was the 1952 Senate election in Massachusetts where Irish Catholic John F. Kennedy defeated WASP Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.. By the 1980s, the liberal Rockefeller Republican wing of the party was marginalized, with the ascent of the conservative Republicans led by Ronald Reagan. Today, there are no Republican members of the six New England states' delegations to the U.S. House of Representatives, and only four Republican senators out of twelve. No Republican presidential candidate has carried more than one New England state since George H. W. Bush won four of six in the 1988 election.

Anglo-Saxon variant

Before WASP came into use in the 1960s the term "Anglo Saxon" filled some of the same purposes, especially when used by writers somewhat hostile to an informal alliance between Britain and the U.S. It was especially common among Irish Americans and writers in France, "Anglo-Saxon" was a term favored by the French (to criticize close diplomatic relations between the US and Britain), and by the Irish Catholics, who considered themselves Celtic and resisted Anglo-Saxon (English) rule in Ireland. American humorist Finley Peter Dunne popularized the ridicule of "Anglo Saxon" circa 1890-1910, even calling President Theodore Roosevelt one. Roosevelt insisted he was Dutch, and invited Dunne to the White House for conversation. "To be genuinely Irish is to challenge WASP dominance," argues Irish politician Tom Hayden.[17] The depiction of the Irish in the films of John Ford was a counterpoint to WASP standards of rectitude. "The procession of rambunctious and feckless Celts through Ford's films, Irish and otherwise, was meant to cock a snoot at WASP or 'lace-curtain Irish' ideas of respectability."[18]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Allen (1975)
  2. ^ Allen (1990)
  3. ^ Friend (2009)
  4. ^ The first recorded use was by Andrew Hacker in 1957. Andrew Hacker, 1957, American Political Science Review 51:1009-1026. WASP was also used by Erdman B. Palmore in The American Journal of Sociology in 1962.
  5. ^ William Thompson & Joseph Hickey, Society in Focus 2005
  6. ^ Allen (1990)
  7. ^ The Decline of the WASP?: Anglo-Protestant Ethnicity and the American Nation-State
  8. ^ Useem (1984)
  9. ^ Friend (2009)
  10. ^ See Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "The Decline of a Class and a Country's Fortunes," New York Times Jan 17. 1991
  11. ^ James D. Davidson, et al. "Persistence and Change in the Protestant Establishment, 1930-1992," Social Forces, Vol. 74, No. 1. (September, 1995), p. 164
  12. ^ The Princeton debate was not about ethnicity per se. see the attack at [1] and Princeton's defense at [2]
  13. ^ Kaufman (2004) p 220
  14. ^ Frank, Robert. "That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP." WSJ. 15 May 2010.
  15. ^ John Aubrey Douglass, Heinke Roebken, and Gregg Thomson. "The Immigrant University: Assessing the Dynamics of Race, Major and Socioeconomic Characteristics at the University of California." (November 2007) online edition
  16. ^ See "Are The Wasps Coming Back? Have They Ever Been Away?" Time Jan. 17. 1969
  17. ^ Tom Hayden, Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America (2003) p. 6
  18. ^ Luke Gibbons, Keith Hopper, and Gráinne Humphreys, The Quiet Man (2002) p 13

References

  • Allen, Irving Lewis. "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet," Ethnicity, 1975 154+
  • Allen, Irving Lewis: Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling from Redskin to Wasp (NY: Bergin & Garvey, 1990) online edition
  • Brookhiser, Richard. The Way of the WASP How It Made America and How It Can Save It, So to Speak, (1991) 171 pages.
  • Cookson, Peter W.; Persell, Caroline Hodges: Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools (1985) online edition
  • Davidson, James D.; Pyle, Ralph E.; Reyes, David V.: "Persistence and Change in the Protestant Establishment, 1930-1992", Social Forces, Vol. 74, No. 1. (September., 1995), pp. 157–175. Online edition
  • Friend, Tad. Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor (2009).
  • Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983) excerpt and text search
  • King, Florence: WASP, Where is Thy Sting? (1977)
  • Pyle, Ralph E.: Persistence and Change in the Protestant Establishment (1996)
  • Salk, Susanna. A Privileged Life: Celebrating WASP Style (2007)
  • Schrag, Peter.: The Decline of the WASP (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1970)
  • Useem, Michael. The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Business Political Activity in the U.S. and U.K. (1984)
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