White Anglo-Saxon Protestants
In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants is a sociological term which is often used to describe white/wealthy Protestant Americans of English, or more broadly British, descent who are generally part of the white dominant culture, and who belong to Protestant denominations. Some sociologists and commentators use WASP more broadly to include all White Protestant Americans of Northwestern European and Northern European ancestry. It was seen to be in exclusionary contrast to Catholics, Jews, Irish, immigrants, southern or eastern Europeans, and the non-White. WASPs have dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States. Critics have disparaged them as "The Establishment". Although the social influence of wealthy WASPs has declined since the 1960s, the group continues to play a central role in American finance, politics, and philanthropy.
WASP is also used for similar elites in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The 1998 Random House Unabridged Dictionary says the term is "sometimes disparaging and offensive".
Naming and definition
In the early Middle Ages, Anglian and Saxon kingdoms were established over most of England. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Anglo-Saxon refers to the pre-invasion English people. Political scientist Andrew Hacker used the term WASP in 1957, with W standing for 'wealthy' rather than 'white'. The P formed a humorous epithet to imply "waspishness" or someone likely to make sharp, slightly cruel remarks. Describing the class of Americans that held "national power in its economic, political, and social aspects", Hacker wrote:An earlier usage appeared in the African-American newspaper The New York Amsterdam News in 1948, when author Stetson Kennedy wrote:
The term was later 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 by arguing that "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."
Citing Gallup polling data from 1976, Kit and Frederica Konolige wrote in their 1978 book The Power of Their Glory, "As befits a church that belongs to the worldwide Anglican Communion, Episcopalianism has the United Kingdom to thank for the ancestors of fully 49 percent of its members.... The stereotype of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant finds its fullest expression in the Episcopal Church."
WASP is also used in Australia and Canada for similar elites. WASPs traditionally have been associated with Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, Congregationalist, and other mainline Protestant denominations; however, the term has expanded to include other Protestant denominations as well.
''Anglo-Saxon'' in modern usage
The concept of Anglo-Saxonism, and especially Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, evolved in the late 19th century, especially among American Protestant missionaries eager to transform the world. Historian Richard Kyle says:Protestantism had not yet split into two mutually hostile camps – the liberals and fundamentalists. Of great importance, evangelical Protestantism still dominated the cultural scene. American values bore the stamp of this Anglo-Saxon Protestant ascendancy. The political, cultural, religious, and intellectual leaders of the nation were largely of a Northern European Protestant stock, and they propagated public morals compatible with their background.
Before WASP came into use in the 1960s, the term Anglo-Saxon served some of the same purposes. Like the newer term WASP, the older term Anglo-Saxon was used derisively by writers hostile to an informal alliance between Britain and the U.S. The negative connotation 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 U.S. and the UK and complaints about perceived "Anglo-Saxon" cultural or political dominance. In December 1918, after victory in the World War, President Woodrow Wilson told a British official in London: "You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the United States....There are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests." The term remains in use in Ireland as a term for the British or English, and sometimes in Scottish Nationalist discourse. Irish-American humorist Finley Peter Dunne popularized the ridicule of "Anglo-Saxons", even calling President Theodore Roosevelt one. Roosevelt insisted he was Dutch. "To be genuinely Irish is to challenge WASP dominance", argues California 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 includes people of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish descent.
In France, Anglo-Saxon refers to the combined impact of Britain and the United States on European affairs. Charles de Gaulle repeatedly sought to "rid France of Anglo-Saxon influence". The term is used with more nuance 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 of Anglophone countries, the term Anglo-Saxon and its translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States, and countries such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Variations include the German Angelsachsen, French le modèle anglo-saxon, Spanish anglosajón, Dutch ' and Italian '.
Anglo-Saxonism in the 19th century
In the nineteenth century, Anglo-Saxons 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. It was often used in implying superiority, much to the annoyance of outsiders. For example, American clergyman Josiah Strong boasted 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 envisioned a future "new era" of triumphant Anglo-Saxonism:
Is it not reasonable to believe that this race is destined to dispossess many weaker ones, assimilate others, and mould the remainder until... it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind?
Other European ethnicities
The popular and sociological usage of the term WASP has sometimes expanded to include not just "Anglo-Saxon" or English-American elites but also American people of other Protestant Northwestern European origin, including Protestant Dutch Americans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans, German Americans, Ulster Scots or "Scotch-Irish" Americans, and Scandinavian Americans. A 1969 Time article stated, "purists like to confine Wasps to descendants of the British Isles; less exacting analysts are willing to throw in Scandinavians, Netherlanders and Germans." The sociologist Charles H. Anderson writes, "Scandinavians are second-class WASPs" but know it is "better to be a second-class WASP than a non-WASP".Sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey described the further expansion of the term's meaning:
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 includes most 'white' people who are not... members of any minority group.
Apart from Protestant English, British, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian Americans, other ethnic groups frequently included under the label WASP include Americans of French Huguenot descent, Protestant Americans of Germanic European descent in general, and established Protestant American families of a "mix" of or of "vague" Germanic Northwestern European heritages.
Culture
Historically, as they comprised most of the primary 17th century settlers, the early Anglo-Protestant settlers in the seventeenth century were the most successful group, culturally, economically, and politically, and they maintained their dominance until the late twentieth century at the earliest. Numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families, such as Boston Brahmin, First Families of Virginia, Old Philadelphians, Tidewater, and Lowcountry gentry or old money, were WASPs. Commitment to the ideals of the Enlightenment meant that they sought to assimilate newcomers from outside of the British Isles, but few were interested in adopting a Pan-European identity for the nation, much less turning it into a global melting pot. However, in the early 1900s, liberal progressives and modernists began promoting more inclusive ideals for what the national identity of the United States should be. While the more traditionalist segments of society continued to maintain their Anglo-Protestant ethnocultural traditions, universalism and cosmopolitanism started gaining favor among the elites. These ideals became institutionalized after the Second World War, and ethnic minorities started moving towards institutional parity with the once dominant Anglo-Protestants.The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural preferences for classical music and traditional religious architecture had defined American high culture and religious life in the United States.