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.
