WASP
Encyclopedia : W : WA : WAS : WASP
- Alternate meaning: Wasp (disambiguation)
Use of the term WASP is growing in other English-speaking countries which were also colonized by the British, such as Australia. If the W is taken to indicate White, WASP is redundant, since Anglo-Saxons can only be white. But one could be White and Protestant, without being Anglo-Saxon, e.g. Irish, Welsh, Highland Scottish. Therefore WASP does serve to differentiate the very specific former religious-racial governing class of parts of the British Empire, and the inheritors of their legacy.
Early Use
The term seems to have first been used by newly immigrant Irish Catholics in America to denote their longstanding conflict with the "Anglo-Saxons" (the Protestants in New England). It was popularized by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell in his 1964 book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America. The term WASP was first used by Andrew Hacker in 1957 in an article published in the American Political Science Review (51:1009-1026)The original use of WASP denoted either an ethnic group, or the culture, customs, and heritage of American Yankees, but now it refers more generally to all members of the elite establishment. The WASP designation usually includes persons of Dutch descent, such as the Vanderbilts and Roosevelts.
In addition to the Yankee descendants of colonial-era English immigrants, other speakers or writers intend the term to include people descended from British gentry immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, who were Protestant (i.e. members of the Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Episcopal (Anglican) churches). Because these non-English immigrants were predominantly descended from Celts, rather than Angles or Saxons they had mixed allegiance, sometimes favoring fellow Celts to the establishment, in modern use they are sometimes called WISPs instead (from the analogous White Irish-Scottish Protestant).
Modern Use
Most dictionaries warn the term is often derogatory or insulting. Northeastern WASPs today refer to themselves as "yankees."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. Some people use it to refer to any powerful elite, with little regard to actual ethnicity. Others use it only to refer to an ethnic group and its culture. In the Northeast United States, it generally is used to contrast 'old stock' Americans from the colonial era with the descendants of later European immigrants, non-protestants such as the Irish-American Catholics and some other "white ethnics."
In the South, where relatively few immigrants settled after 1860, WASP is less commonly used. In the Western United States, Anglo is often used to contrast white Americans of European ancestry from Hispanics. It has a broader meaning than WASP, as it includes all English-speaking Whites, no matter their religion, actual ancestry or ethnicity.
As an example of the broadening of use, consider that in Turkey in 2002, Abdullah Gül called his fellow cadres in AK Parti as "WASPs of this country", possibly referring to their ethnic Turkish origins, strongly mainstream Sunni beliefs, and their "enterprising spirit" thought to be compatible with Protestant work ethic, and declaring their party would necessarily follow a centrist line instead of hardline Islamism. [link]
Original WASPs
The original WASP élite supposedly dominated the social structure of the United States since the early 1800s. Legacy admission to prep schools and to large universities in Ivy League or small liberal arts colleges such as the "Little Ivies" taught habit and attitude and formed connections which carried over to the influential spheres of finance, culture, and politics. Intermarriage preserved large inherited fortunes. Diversions such as polo and yachting marked those with sufficient wealth and leisure to pursue them. 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 Boston's Beacon Hill are two notable examples—governed by covenants designed to separate the well-bred from the merely wealthy.Other communities in this genre include Greenwich, Connecticut; Darien, Connecticut;Wellesley, Massachusetts; Beverly Farms, Massachusetts; Prides Crossing, Massachusetts; West Peabody, Massachusetts; Manchester, Massachusetts; and Old Westbury, New York. By the start of the 21st century, many former WASP enclaves in the Northeast had a plurality of Catholic residents, such as Manhasset, New York.
It was not until after World War II that the networks of privilege and power in the old Protestant establishment began to lose significance. The GI Bill brought higher education to the children of poor immigrants, postwar era created ample economic opportunity and a large new middle class. Nevertheless, the WASPs remain overrepresented in the country's cultural, political, and economic élite. 2
Aspects of the WASP establishment remain visible today. They are still upper middle to upper class educated Protestants, members of high society, with prep school and Ivy League educations. They are concentrated in New England and the Northeast. However, these regions now have majority Catholic populations and are no longer WASP heartlands.
See also
Notes
- Note 1: Erdman B. Palmore coined the term in his article "Ethnophaulisms and Ethnocentrisms" (The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 67, No. 4. (Jan., 1962), p. 442), but it was Baltzell who popularized it.
- Note 2: Davidson, Pyle, Reyes, p. 164
- Note 3: Allen, p. 110
- Note 4: Allen, pp. 114–116
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