Talk:White Anglo-Saxon Protestants

Criticism

I removed the following from the lead:

After World War II, Americans increasingly criticized the WASP hegemony and disparaged them as the epitome of "the Establishment".

This was not cited to any source, and the rest of the article doesn't mention "criticism" anywhere. Any help finding a source would be appreciated. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:31, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I restored it and cited Irving Lewis Allen "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" Ethnicity (1975) 2#2: 153–162. --see also his book. Rjensen (talk) 00:40, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, could you specify where and how the source supports the text, for those of us who don't have access to it? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 05:08, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

The writings of Louis Auchincloss argue that the WASPs declined because of "a fatal narrowness and flabbiness of character". The same argument is stressed in E. Digby Baltzell. "It is a very common view" says Nelson Aldrich IV, "The upper class, up for grabs," Wilson Quarterly (1993), 18#3 pp 65-72. Rjensen (talk) 18:24, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, are you quoting Allen here, or are these additional citations for the same material? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:10, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I was quoting Aldrich, who has written a book and some articles on the topic. Rjensen (talk) 18:53, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, but where does the cited source (Allen) say anything about "WASP hegemony" or being "the epitome of 'The Establishment'"? That implies the criticism that WASPs had too much power. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:43, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Sociologist John W Dykstra in 1958 described “Mr. Bigot,” a character commonly rebuked in American life who he succinctly defined as the “white AngloSaxon Protestant.” [Kevin M. Schultz, 2010] [Dykstra, John W. "THE PHD FETISH." School and Society 86.2133 (1958): 237-239.] Rjensen Schultz goes on to say that in 2010 WASP is "a much-maligned class identity....Today, it signifies an elitist snoot." Rjensen (talk) 21:47, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Elitism isn't the same as the Establishment, and class identity is not the same as hegemony. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

a new search reveals lots of articles on "WASP hegemony:--are you arguing that it never existed???

The Late, Great American WASP - WSJhttps://online.wsj.com › article

Dec 23, 2013 — Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP ...

Paul Heise: The fall of the WASP elite has thrown us into ...https://www.pressandjournal.com › stories › paul-heise-...

Sep 25, 2012 — This election is a clear marker of the end of WASP hegemony. No WASPs are on either the Democratic or Republican presidential tickets nor ...

WASPs Were Awesome, WSJ Essay Mythologizes - The Atlantichttps://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2013/12 › wasp...

Dec 21, 2013 — Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP ...

What does "WASP hegemony" mean? | History Forumhttps://historum.com › ... › North American History

Nov 21, 2020 — It means domination by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Why Wasps are an endangered species in the US | The ...https://www.independent.co.uk › Voices › Comment

Dec 29, 2013 — And, Epstein goes on, "under Wasp hegemony corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public ... Rjensen (talk) 21:42, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

None of the above supports the statement that Americans increasingly criticized the WASP hegemony. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

White Anglo Saxon Protestants are from more than one class

The current article begins wrong White Anglo Saxon Protestant is an ethnic description not a class description. Most of the Upper Class were White Anglo Saxon Protestants but they were most of every other class too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RichardBond (talk • contribs) 12:31, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is a term applied specifically to the upper class. If there reliable sources that say otherwise, feel free to present them here. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 July 2021

Theories around the self-proclaimed supremacy of the WASP are at the origin of the creation of anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, segregationist and racist movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan in the United States or the Orange Order in Northern Ireland and in Canada. The radical ideology of these WASP movements advocates the supremacy of the white race and develops xenophobic theories. Dayyen (talk) 20:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Term or concept?

@Sangdeboeuf: The article currently reads:

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is a term used in the United States for ...

It is true that "WASP" is a term for a certain category of person, a WASP; just as "banana" is a term for a certain kind of fruit, a banana. The question is whether this article is about the term or about the category, and thus whether WP:REFERS applies.

Most of this article is in fact about the category, not the term. Of course, like many articles, there is a section on the origins and connotations of the term as well. But unlike, say, Swamp Yankee or Redneck or White trash, the term isn't primarily a pejorative or hostile epithet, and the article in fact uses the term repeatedly in Wikipedia's editorial voice as a description. It would be unthinkable to use one of those expressions in Wikipedia's voice to say things like "xxxs tend to concentrate within close proximity of each other".

The word is used descriptively in the titles of books, magazines, and journal articles, both laudatory (The Way of the WASP: How it Made America, and how it Can Save It, So to Speak) and critical (Crashing the Gates: The De-WASPing of America's Power Elite, "The Death of the WASP Elite Is Greatly Exaggerated"); and by political scientists and sociologists (one of whom popularized it). Like many other categories, it is not terribly precise (cf. middle class or elite), but that doesn't make it less of a category.

So, per WP:REFERS, the lead should instead read:

In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs are white American Protestants, generally upper-class and usually of British descent.

Discussion? --Macrakis (talk) 17:05, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

The important thing is how the sources frame WASP, whether as a term or concept. I haven't read all of the sources cited, but Zhang (2015) introduces the topic as "the acronym WASP" before describing the group in sociological terms. If this is representative of other reference works, then I think it's fair to describe WASP as a term and also use it in Wikipedia's voice. The sources may be using the term as a "lens" through which to view the related sociological phenomena. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:31, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

In fact I may have been wrong in moving the page from the singular White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. If the topic is framed as a term then it may be better at the singular title, even if most of the article is not specifically about the term itself. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

WASP is certainly an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but I don't see the relevance of that. NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautic and Space Administration, but the article is about the organization, not about the term. If the group is described in sociological terms, it is talking about the group, not the name.

The plural article title seems reasonable; Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals) mentions "Articles on religious, national, or ethnic groupings of people", and WASP is often considered an ethnicity. So we have Bretons, Irish Americans, etc. Though we also have Brahmin where the article title is in the singular, though it is given a plural verb, and later the article talks of "Brahmins". Similarly, there is an article on Boston Brahmin which then calls them "Boston Brahmins" in the lead (and mentions that they are considered to be White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). --Macrakis (talk) 21:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Once again, the important thing is how published, reliable sources frame the topic. Terms, acronyms, etc. can also be encyclopedic subjects. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:05, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Let's look at some examples from the footnotes of the article:

• Zhang: "From the American Revolution to the 1930s, the WASPs, especially those with a clear ideology of close, upper-class ties, dominated America in all social aspects" -- clearly using WASP substantively, with no scare quotes or other indication that they are talking about the term rather than the concept.
• Allen: title mentions both the concept and the term (as epithet) (I haven't seen the full text)
• Wilton: (I don't have access to this article)
• Kaufmann: uses WASP substantively through the whole article.
• Glassman: Introduces the definition and then uses it substantively in many places ("the general American culture was now WASP"; "...reconceptualizations of WASP culture..."; "...being accepted by WASP America..."; etc etc)
• Champion: uses WASP substantively

Need I go on? --Macrakis (talk) 22:30, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Sources may use the term substantively, but if they also introduce it as a term or acronym, as with Zhang, Glassman, et al., then that seems to be a sign that they are distancing themselves from it somewhat. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree with that reasoning at all. If an article about the agriculture of avocados starts off with "Avocado, like chocolate and cacao, is one of the few English words that comes from Nahuatl" that does not mean that the article is about the word! --Macrakis (talk) 23:13, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

No one said it did. But if it were in an etymological dictionary, then it definitely would. I don't think there's always a sharp distinction between terms and concepts; certain words are used as a "lens" through which related concepts are examined. That may be the case here. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:19, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, if the cited articles were about the etymology or usage of the term "WASP", that would be one thing. But they are not -- except of course for several cited in the "Naming" section. They are about the category, not the name of the category. And the Wikipedia article reflects that clearly, consistently using WASP to talk about a category of person. --Macrakis (talk) 14:40, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

At least three of the chosen sources also discuss WASP as a term. I think that's significant. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Sure, it's perfectly normal to discuss the term as part of the discussion of the topic. And there's no question that "WASP" can be used both as an analytical term and as a loaded epithet. But that's true of many terms, especially about social and ethnic groups. Heck, there's a whole article on Names of the Greeks, but the article on Greeks does not say "Greeks is a term used...", even though many Greeks vociferously prefer the term "Hellene". --Macrakis (talk) 22:40, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

What counts is how sources for this article frame the topic, not how any other article is written. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:18, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say that the Greek situation was the same as the WASP situation. I was just giving an example of another case where there are both terminological issues and substantive issues.

At this point, I don't think we're converging, so it looks like it might be time to ask for a third opinion. --Macrakis (talk) 01:00, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

See the Third Opinion request 03:12, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

Having spent some time looking through this article's references, I'm mildly in favor of changing the lead to talk about the category rather than the term. Clearly the term is somewhat charged, and some authors do feel the need to talk about it explicitly, define it, treat it with some distance, etc.. However, (a) those authors seem to me to to be very much in the minority, especially among the more contemporary sources, and (b) are predominantly writing in academic contexts (e.g. Kaufmann, Zhang) where it's especially important that they define their terms clearly, even terms that are used without much question among the general public. In contrast, there are many articles from the popular press cited (NYT, Time, Chicago Tribune, etc.) that use WASP fearlessly to refer to the category without feeling any need to define it or focus on it as a term at all. Even some academic authors (e.g. Champion) use it in this fashion, and many of the academic authors that do focus on it as a term initially (including Kaufmann and Zhang) often go on to discuss the category primarily rather than restricting their focus to the term overall. Naturally there are some sources that do focus primarily on the term, which justifies the existence of the "Naming" section. That said, WP:REFERS implies to me that if an article is going to introduce its subject as a term as opposed to a category, the focus of the article ought to be on the term itself more-or-less overwhelmingly. That isn't currently the case for this article, and I wouldn't think would be appropriate if it was given the pool of evidence that already exists here. Mesocarp (talk) 14:23, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I will revert the lead to the "category" formulation. --Macrakis (talk) 15:54, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Two groups

I have started a new section for the comment below, which is on a different topic than the discussion above on "term or concept?". --Macrakis (talk) 14:36, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I have a problem with the suggestion that opens this section: "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs are white American Protestants, generally upper-class and usually of British descent." There are two groups --by far the most common usage deals with a small powerful white Protestant elite. The term is also used less often to cover 100 million plus Protestants of British descent. Rjensen (talk) 23:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

anglo saxons are english.

Anglo-Saxon refers to the ancestry of ENGLISH people: literally explained in the entry for "Anglo-Saxon". Britain is made up of 4 nations. The Welsh, Scottish and Irish peoples of Britain are not Anglo-Saxon, and no one ever called Irish-American people, even the protestant ones, WASPs. The term specifically excludes Americans of Irish ancestry, yet the Irish immigrants came from "Britain". This article should be more honest. 98.202.5.27 (talk) 07:45, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Article contents are based on published, reliabe sources. Feel free to present additional sources to support any desired changes. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 08:18, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

"But in fact WASPs were not an English but an American phenomenon, and it was not their English blood that particularly distinguished them or, for that matter, their Protestant religion. A large number of Americans who were of English descent, who were communicants in a Protestant church, and who might even have been rich, were nevertheless not WASPs. On the other hand, people who were not of English extraction or were only partially so (the Roosevelts, for example, and the Jameses) figure largely in the WASP story’. For it was not blood or heredity, but a longing for completeness that distinguished the WASPs in their prime..1. Yet the acronym we have fixed upon them is, in its absurdity, faithful to the tragicomedy of this once formidable tribe, so nearly visionary and so decisively blind, now that it has been reduced in stature and its most significant" [1]

The complaint is like saying the word anti-Semite means anti-Arab. Doug Weller talk 10:29, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

In a British Isle context you'd have a point: "Anglo" is used exclusively in Britain and Ireland to describe all things English, and is never applied to the Irish, Welsh or Scots. But this article is about the term "WASP" in a US historical context - which had initially evolved to describe a caste that had formed during the Gilded Age, and then came to represent social stratification in the World War 1 period. The European origins of these WASP families span many places other than England (the Astor family, for example, had roots all over Europe, including the Italian side of the Western Alps).

What distinguished these families, who in some cases had mixed and vague European backgrounds, from other Americans, and what inspired sociologists like Baltzell to single them out for special treatment, was that they occupied a unique social niche, attended the same boarding schools (finishing schools for women) and universities, were members of the same social clubs (eg the Union Club), and dominated the upper echelons of American political, financial and industrial institutions for several decades of US history. They also shared peculiar mannerisms (like speaking in a fake British accent), obsessions (genealogy, having perfect posture etc), and social etiquettes. In plain English, these families were all upper class Anglophiles in a country that was and had always been Anglophobic since the Revolutionary War (read about the Astor Place Riot for more insight into this 19th Century class dynamic).

There were indeed upper class families with Irish ancestry, and I'm not talking about the "Scots-Irish". Some obvious examples are the Kane family, the Carroll family, and the Iselin family. Arthur Leary was president of the Union Club and made Ward McAllister's 400 list, despite being the grandson of an Irish immigrant and a Catholic (his mother's family came from Dutch immigrants). Thomas Fortune Ryan was also cited by Baltzell in his Gilded Age WASP directory. You will find many other Irish family names in the Social Register directories for the period in question, particularly in New York and Boston (I counted dozens).Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2022 (UTC)