White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
WASP [ wɒsp ] is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ("white Anglo-Saxon Protestant") and a term that is generally used disparagingly for members of the Protestant white middle and upper classes of the United States of America , whose ancestors were European settlers in the founding period were.
The term differentiates the early colonizers with their disproportionately large influence within the US elite from immigrants of other European (e.g. Irish-Americans , Italian-Americans ) or non-European origins and denominations .
For the first time the term was used by Irish Catholics in reference to English Protestants . In the 19th and first half of the 20th century there was an unspoken hierarchy among immigrants and their descendants:
- At the top were the WASPs, i.e. the Protestant English, Northern Irish and Scots,
- this was followed by the mostly Protestant Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians,
- then the mostly Catholic Irish, Poles and Italians and
- at the lowest level, the African American .
In general, Edward Digby Baltzell with his book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America , published in 1964, is regarded as the originator of the term. Baltzell originally meant a small upper class; later authors expanded the term to a large extent and used it to cover all those parts of the white population who came from Great Britain or Ireland (including Scots and Welsh) and were Protestants (but also Catholics). For a long time it was considered in sociology that the political elite were also recruited from the circles of the WASPs .
See also
literature
- Eric P. Kaufmann: The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 978-0-674-01303-2 .
Web links
- Christoph von Marschall : America is no longer what it was. - Obama's new US Supreme Court candidate Elena Kagan has to go to the Senate hearing. With her appointment, no Protestant will be represented in the Supreme Court. In: zeit.de from June 28, 2010