White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is an informal term, sometimes derogatory or disparaging,
for a closed group of high-status Americans of English Protestant ancestry. The term applies
to a group believed to control disproportionate social and financial power. The term WASP
does not describe every Protestant of English background, but rather a small restricted
group whose family wealth and elite connections allow them a degree of privilege held by few
others. When the term appears in writing, it usually
indicates the author's disapproval of the group's excessive power in society. The hostile
tone can be seen in an alternative dictionary: "The WASP culture has been the most aggressive,
powerful, and arrogant society in the world for the last thousand years, so it is natural
that it should receive a certain amount of warranted criticism." People seldom call themselves
WASPs, except humorously; the acronym is typically used by non-WASPs.
Scholars agree that the group's influence has waned since the end of World War II, with
the growing influence of Jews, Catholics, African Americans and other former outsiders.
The term is also used in Canada and Australia for similar elites.
Origin of term Historically, "Anglo-Saxon" referred to the
Anglo Saxon language of the inhabitants of England before about 1150. Since the 19th
century it has been in common use in the English-speaking world, but not in Britain itself, to refer
to Protestants of English descent. The "W" and "P" were added in the 1950s to form a
witty epithet with an undertone of "waspishness". The first published mention of the term WASP
was provided by political scientist Andrew Hacker in 1957, indicating WASP was already
used as common terminology among American sociologists, though the "W" stands for "Wealthy"
rather than "White": The term was popularized by sociologist and
University of Pennsylvania professor E. Digby Baltzell, himself a WASP, in his 1964 book
The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Baltzell stressed the
closed or caste-like characteristic of the group, arguing, "There is a crisis in American
leadership in the middle of the twentieth century that is partly due, I think, to the
declining authority of an establishment which is now based on an increasingly castelike
White-Anglo Saxon-Protestant upper class." Expansion
Sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey noted the expansion of the term's coverage
over time: WASPs vary in exact Protestant denomination,
however the great majority have traditionally been associated with Episcopal, Presbyterian,
and other mainline Protestant denominations. Today, the usage of the term has expanded
to include not just English American elites but also families of predominately non-English
Protestant Northern European and Northwestern European origin, including Scottish Americans
and Ulster Scots, Dutch Americans, French Huguenots, German Americans, and Scandinavian
Americans. In recent years, another minor usage has appeared
in northeastern states to refer to a fashion style or a preppy lifestyle.
Culture attributed to WASPs The WASP elite dominated much of politics
and the economy, as well as the high culture, well into the 20th century. Anthony Smith
argues 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.
WASPs are still prominent at prep schools, Ivy League universities, and prestigious liberal
arts colleges, such as the Little Ivies or Seven Sisters. Entry to these colleges is
based on merit, but there is nonetheless a certain preference for "legacy" alumni. Students
learned skills, habits, and attitudes and formed connections which carried over to the
influential spheres of finance, culture, and politics.
WASP leisure included upscale activities such as foreign travel, equestrianism, and yachting
— expensive pursuits that need both leisure time and affluence to pursue, and which sociologists
such as Thorstein Veblen have pointed to as a marker of social standing. 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 Jersey's Princeton; Florida's Palm Beach; Fairfield County, Connecticut; the coast of
Maine, particularly Bar Harbor; Newport, Rhode Island; Manhattan's Upper East Side; Westchester
County, New York; the Hamptons of Long Island; Boston's Beacon Hill; McLean, Alexandria,
and Georgetown all in the Washington metropolitan area; Cincinnati's Village of Indian Hill
and City of Springboro; Cleveland's Shaker Heights, Village of Bratenahl, Hunting Valley,
Kirtland Hills, and Gates Mills; Detroit's Grosse Pointe, MI; and Chicago's Lake Forest,
Kenilworth, Glencoe, and Highland Park are all examples.
A common practice of WASP families is presenting their daughters of marriagable age at a debutante
ball, such as The International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York
City. In the Midwest, WASPs favored the University
of Michigan, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago. In the Detroit area,
WASPs dominated the wealth that came from the huge industrial capacity of the automotive
industry. After the 1967 Detroit riot, they tended to congregate in the Grosse Pointe
suburbs. In Chicago, they are present in neighborhoods such as Kenilworth in the northern suburbs
and Oak Park in the eastern suburbs. David Brooks, a commentator on class who attended
an Episcopal prep school, writes that WASPs took pride in "good posture, genteel manners,
personal hygiene, pointless discipline, the ability to sit still for long periods of time."
Attacks on the WASP image In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution
denied prominent black singer Marian Anderson permission to sing in Constitution Hall. In
the ensuing furor, the president's wife Eleanor Roosevelt publicly resigned from the DAR and
arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before a cheering crowd of 75,000.
Also in 1939, the old elite came under ridicule in the smash Broadway comedy hit, "Arsenic
and Old Lace". The play was later adapted as the Hollywood film, "Arsenic and Old Lace".
The play was written by Joseph Kesselring, a former music professor at Bethel College,
a school of the pacifist Mennonite church. The play appeared at a time of strong isolationist
sentiment regarding European affairs. The film tells how the hero Mortimer Brewster
makes the horrifying discovery that his two beloved maiden aunts, are serial murderers
of homeless old men. The Brewsters trace the family back to the Mayflower, and the walls
of their genteel Brooklyn home are hung with oil portraits of their ancestors. Religion
is repeatedly alluded to. The Brewsters have delusions of grandeur. Mortimer's brother
who lives with the two sisters believes that he is President Theodore Roosevelt. The sisters
see themselves as philanthropists who help lonely old men. Wearing old lace, the two
kill old men with wine laced with arsenic. The Brewster family is so eminently respectable
that the Irish police reject the idea that there could be 13 murder victims buried in
the basement. In the finale, Mortimer Brewster discovers he was adopted and is not really
a Brewster. If he is not a member of the Brewster family, he realizes he will not become insane
or a murderer. In the film's closing scene he exclaims "I'm not a Brewster, I'm a son
of a sea cook!" as he gleefully takes his new bride on their honeymoon. Gunter argues
that the deep theme of the film is the conflict in American history between the liberty to
do anything, and America's bloody hidden past. He notes that the evil disfigured nephew was
played by Raymond Massey. He was well known at the time for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln;
now he is a disfigured monster, and Gunter suggests a link between Lincoln and American
atrocities. Fading dominance
It was not until after World War II that the privilege and power in the old Protestant
establishment began to decline. Many reasons have been attributed to the decline of WASP
power, and books have been written detailing it. Self-imposed diversity incentives opened
the country's most elite schools. The GI Bill brought higher education to new ethnic arrivals,
who found middle class jobs in the postwar economic expansion. Nevertheless, white Protestants
remain influential in the country's cultural, political, and economic elite.
In the federal civil service, once dominated by those from a Protestant denomination, especially
in the Department of State, 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, at one point lost favor with donors because too few
of its graduates were entering careers in the federal government. By the 1990s there
were “roughly the same proportion of WASPs, Catholics, and Jews at the elite levels of
the federal civil service, and a greater proportion of Jewish and Catholic elites among corporate
lawyers.” In 2014, the Supreme Court, for instance, is entirely composed of Catholics
and Jews. Historian Charles J. Scalise, coined the term
"WIP" for Italian Americans who convert to Protestantism.
With the 2010 retirement of John Paul Stevens, the U.S. Supreme Court has no White Protestant
members. The University of California, Berkeley, once a WASP stronghold, has changed radically:
only 30% of its undergraduates in 2007 were of European origin, and 63% of undergraduates
at the University were from immigrant families, especially Asian.
A significant shift of American economic activity toward the Sun Belt during the latter part
of the 20th century, and an increasingly globalized economy have also contributed to the decline
in power held by Northeastern WASPs. While WASPs are no longer solitary among the American
elite, members of the Patrician class remain markedly prevalent within the current power
structure. Related political culture
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 pro-business liberal Republicanism of their social stratum, espousing internationalist
views on foreign policy, supporting social programs, and holding liberal views on issues
like racial integration. A famous confrontation was the 1952 Senate election in Massachusetts
where Irish Catholic John F. Kennedy defeated WASP Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.. However the challenge
by Barry Goldwater in 1964 to the Eastern Republican establishment helped undermine
the WASP dominance. Goldwater himself had solid WASP credentials through his mother,
but was instead mistakenly seen as part of the Jewish community. By the 1980s, the liberal
Rockefeller Republican wing of the party was marginalized, overwhelmed by the dominance
of the Southern and Western conservative Republicans. Catholics in the Northeast and the Midwest,
usually Irish-American, dominated Democratic party politics in big cities through the ward
boss system. Catholic politicians were often the target of WASP political hostility.
In Quebec politics, Rene Levesque attracted controversy in 1970 by attacking what he called
"WASP arrogance." Anglo-Saxon as a modern term
"Anglo-Saxons" before 1900 was often used as a synonym for all people of English descent
and sometimes more generally, for all the English-speaking peoples of the world as such.
For example, American missionary Josiah Strong said in 1890:
In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo- Saxons had increased
to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than 120,000,000."
In 1893 Strong predicted, "This race is destined to dispossess many weaker ones, assimilate
others, and mould the remainder until... it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind."
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", meaning in effect the whole Anglosphere, remains a term favored by the
French, used disapprovingly in contexts such as criticism of the Special Relationship of
close diplomatic relations between the US and Britain, a more market-oriented economic
approach, and discussion of perceived "Anglo-Saxon" cultural or political dominance. It also remains
in use in Ireland as a term for the British or English, and sometimes in Scottish Nationalist
discourse. 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 politician Tom Hayden. 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." In Australia, "Anglo" or "Anglo-Saxon" refers
to people of English descent, while "Anglo-Celtic" expands to include people of Irish and Scottish
descent. In France, "Anglo Saxon" firstly refers to
England, and by extension to all English-speaking countries. It has a neutral meaning, and can
be used both in a positive sense or pejoratively. In a negative use, it can refer to "immoral
capitalism", where money is more valuable than human life. It also has had more nuanced
uses in discussions by French writers on French decline, especially as an alternative model
to which France should aspire, how France should adjust to its two most prominent global
competitors, and how it should deal with social and economic modernization.
Outside Anglophone countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world, the term "Anglo-Saxon"
and its direct translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of
Britain, the United States, and other countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand
– areas which are sometimes referred to as the Anglosphere. The term "Anglo-Saxon"
can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive
language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems. Variations include
the German "Angelsachsen", French "Anglo-Saxon", Spanish "anglosajón", Dutch "anglosaksisch",
Italian "anglosassone", Portuguese "anglo-saxão", Polish "anglosaski", Catalan "anglosaxó",
Japanese "Angurosakuson" and Ukrainian "aнглосакси". See also
Boston Brahmin Corporatism
Elitism Ethnic elite
Irish Catholic Ivy League
Old money Socialite
Upper class Yankee
Notes
References Allen, Irving Lewis. "WASP—From Sociological
Concept to Epithet", Ethnicity, 1975 154+ Allen, Irving Lewis: Unkind Words: Ethnic
Labeling from Redskin to Wasp ISBN 9780897892209 Brookhiser, Richard. The
Way of the WASP How It Made America and How It Can Save It, So to Speak, 171 pages. ISBN
9780029047217 Chabal, Emile., "The Rise of the Anglo-Saxon:
French Perceptions of the Anglo-American World in the Long Twentieth Century", French Politics,
Culture & Society 31#1 pp. 24–46 Cookson, Peter W.; Persell, Caroline Hodges:
Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools ISBN 9780465062683
Davidson, James D.; Pyle, Ralph E.; Reyes, David V.: "Persistence and Change in the Protestant
Establishment, 1930-1992", Social Forces, Vol. 74, No. 1., pp. 157–175.
Friend, Tad. Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor. ISBN 9780316003179
Fussell, Paul. Class: A Guide Through the American Status System ISBN 9780671792251
Kaufmann, Eric P. "The decline of the WASP in the United States and Canada" in Kaufmann,
ed., Rethinking ethnicity pp 54–73 ISBN 9780415315425
King, Florence: WASP, Where is Thy Sting? Pyle, Ralph E.: Persistence and Change in
the Protestant Establishment Salk, Susanna. A Privileged Life: Celebrating
WASP Style Schrag, Peter.: The Decline of the WASP
Useem, Michael. The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Business Political Activity
in the U.S. and U.K.