White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (April 2008)

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, commonly abbreviated to the acronym WASP, is a sociological and cultural ethnonym that originated in the United States.

The term originated in reference to White Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent, who were Protestant in religious affiliation. However, the term does not have a precise definition, and can be used to describe greatly differing groups.^[1] It initially applied to people with histories in the upper class Northeastern establishment, who were alleged to form a powerful elite. Working class whites in the U.S. are generally not referred to as "WASPs", even if they are Protestants of Anglo-Saxon descent.^[2]

Protestant Christianity is considered the dominant religious sect among WASPs, particularly mainline denominations such as Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Episcopalianism, and Unitarianism.

Strictly speaking, many people now referred to as "WASPs" are not Anglo-Saxon – that is, the descendants of the Germanic peoples, who settled in Britain between the 5th century and the Norman Conquest.^[3] However, in modern North American usage, WASP may include Protestants, from English, Dutch, German, Huguenot (French Protestant), Scandinavian, Scottish, Scots-Irish and Welsh backgrounds.^[4] Therefore, the term WASP is sometimes applied to individuals who are technically non-Anglo-Saxons, including people with:

• Dutch origins, such as the Vanderbilt and Roosevelt families
• German descent, such as the Rockefeller, Heinz, and Astor families.^[5]
• French descent, such as the Du Pont family
• Scots origins, such as the Carnegie family.
• Scots-Irish origins, such as the Mellon family.

Usage

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. However, its first recorded use was by Andrew Hacker in 1957.^[6]

The original use of WASP denoted either an ethnic group, or the culture, customs, and heritage of early Western European settlers in what is today the United States. The New England Yankee elite were almost exclusively of English extraction, although some early German immigrants, largely Protestant, arrived in the Dutch colony of New Netherland.

Sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey noted the impreciseness of usage. Conceived as the upper class, well educated of English descent residing in the Northeast they note that such WASPs are a minority of Americans and a minority of White Protestants:

In the Southwestern United States, "Anglo" is often used to contrast white Americans of European ancestry from Hispanics. It has a broader meaning than WASP, as it is sometimes used to include all non-Hispanic English-speaking whites, regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

When using the term, speakers vary widely in terms of which ethnic group they mean to designate, and some even apply it to all Protestants of European descent. For that reason, use of the term WASP has broadened significantly since its first use. Others use it only to refer to only certain members of this ethnic group and its culture.

In the United States, it is most prevalently used today to contrast early arriving, Western European, "old stock" Americans with the descendants of later arriving groups from Southern and Eastern Europe, Catholic Ireland and other parts of the world. The term WASP is also often used in a way which is synonymous with "The Establishment" or for the privilege that white Protestants in America allegedly enjoyed.

Usage of the term WASP has grown in other English-speaking countries, such as Canada and Australia, which were settled by members of similar ethnic groups.

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] Many only associate America's elite institutions with WASPs when it has always been a wider, more diverse group. The class is still imagined to dominate America's prep schools and to older universities including those in the Ivy League or small liberal arts colleges, including NESCAC schools (see the "Little Ivies"). It is true that these elite institutions were important to a certain portion of WASPs, who were taught skills, habits, and attitudes and formed connections which carried over to the influential spheres of finance, culture, and politics. While people labeled as "WASPs" were not a truly insular society, well into the 20th century, prominent families preserved an attitude toward marriage carried over from the British aristocracy: A desire to marry was carefully scrutinized by the potential groom's and potential bride's families. Marriage was often influenced by the desire to maintain each party in their social and cultural milieu. This is something that occurs in other cultures as well.

WASP families, particularly the affluent upper-class, are sometimes stereotyped as pursuing traditional British diversions such as squash, golf, tennis, Badminton, riding, polo, and yachting, 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, and Boston's Beacon Hill are notable examples.

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.^[8] Among the reasons often cited is increased competitive pressure as the WASPs themselves opened the doors to competition. The GI Bill and government-supported mortgage programs brought higher education to the children of poor European immigrants, 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.^[9]

Related Political Culture

WASPs in the Northeast, Midwest, and West were once dominant in the Republican Party. Catholics in the Northeast, generally recent Irish or Italian immigrants, populated that region's Democratic party politics. Catholic, or "white ethnic," voters and politicians failed to find favor among WASP voters even in the liberal Northeast.^[10] A popular example was the 1952 senate election in Massachusetts between John F. Kennedy and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., decisively split along sectarian lines (despite JFK's WASPish associations such as Choate, Harvard, Spee Club, Hyannisport). While affluent, white, Protestant Northerners tended at one point toward temperamental conservatism (or noblesse oblige progressivism), trends and demographics have changed these realities. The old style Rockefeller Republicans wing of the party favored by WASPs weakened, as most recent successful Republican politicians in the Northeast have been Catholics, such as George Pataki. Five of the six New England states have recently become reliably Democratic in their presidential voting; the exception, New Hampshire, votes Democratic as often as not, and in any case is characterized by libertarianism more than liberalism or conservatism. White Protestants in the South are largely Republicans.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism of the Term

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Some object to the expression because of its inaccuracy and because the term is used in a casual manner by people who may not understand its full meaning or its imprecision. As noted above, many people now referred to as "WASPs" are not Anglo-Saxon in the sense of being descendants of certain tribes of Germanic settlers of Britain. In addition, some see it as a racial, ethnic, and religious slur showing contempt for European Americans and an attempt to smother European American diversity, since European Americans trace their origins to a large number of European countries: It is therefore difficult to apply a single catch-all term.

See also

• American Dream
• Boston Brahmin
• Critical race theory
• Gentile
• Preppy

Notes

References

• Allen, Irving Lewis: Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling from Redskin to Wasp (NY: Bergin & Garvey, 1990)
• Cookson, Peter W.; Persell, Caroline Hodges: Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools (NY: Basic Books, 1985)
• 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.
• King, Florence: WASP, Where is Thy Sting? (NY: Stein and Day, 1977)
• Pyle, Ralph E.: Persistence and Change in the Protestant Establishment (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996)
• Schrag, Peter.: The Decline of the WASP (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1970)

External links

• Anglo-Saxons and Britons