What is the least "WASP" city in the United States?

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by homebucket

I’ve never heard of the term WASP until SSP. Out here white people are just “white people”. From someone who’s never heard of the term before it sounds like WASP is a term for rich white people.

Because you are from "out there"... where there is over a century less white American social history. The palpable divide between working-class white Catholics and upper-class white Protestants that was born across the Atlantic and spread over here is something that there are still remnants of in (primarily) eastern US society.

Originally Posted by eschaton

There were remnants of the old Catholic/Protestant political divide in New England up through the 1990s.

But yeah...WASP developed as a pejorative used by Catholics and Jews in the Northeast to describe the Protestant ruling class.

I heard WASP growing up in PA and was familiar with the term at a relatively early age.

The country club set where everyone had rather bland last names is what I always associated the term with

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Oak Brook and Naperville definitely aren't old money WASPy. Those are newer sprawl areas. Oak Brook didn't exist when the term really meant something. Naperville is more a middle/upper middle class commuter burb.

I have no idea what point you are making anymore

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I heard WASP growing up in PA and was familiar with the term at a relatively early age.

I had a former co-worker who grew up in Erie. He said because of his dad he presumed "fuckingpresbyterians" was one word until he was like eight.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by pj3000

The country club set where everyone had rather bland last names is what I always associated the term with

This. The judge doofus in Caddyshack is a perfect caricature.

Country clubs are a good present-day proxy for these cultural divides. There are still WASP clubs, Jewish clubs and Catholic clubs even though polite society doesn't talk about it.

In Manhattan, the Knickerbocker Club and the Racquet and Tennis Club are still WASP. Bloomberg was the first Jewish member of the Racquet and Tennis Club.

In the Hamptons, the Southampton Bathing Corp and the Maidstone Club are WASP.

Of course these are cultural cleavages nowadays, mostly. There are very few clubs where you won't find a single member with a differing background. WASP mostly means old money gatekeeping from perceived nouveaux excess.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

It's is a little funny to me how many of you use the word "WASP" very differently than I do.

I went to a prestigious northshore catholic "college prep" high school and it was as preppy as you would imagine any wealthy college prep school to be, but the "WASP" label was not a term that anyone in my school would've identified with. We were overtly Catholic, and thus not ""WASP" by definition.

Yeah... I think this is because the WASP identity has faded so much, particularly in the big northern cities. The traits of affluent WASP culture have just become synonymous with being upper middle class and white. You probably have to go to the South to find the surviving remnants of true WASP culture. I still think of a place like Fairfax County in northern Virginia as being much more WASPy than a place like Westchester County. Even Montgomery County, Md seemed EXTREMELY WASPy when I was a kid, but I'm not so sure it holds up to that today. There's also still a bit of affluent WASPiness in the Carolinas and Georgia.

[Docere]

Kenilworth

Irish 22.7%
German 22.1%
English/American 14.7%
Italian 6.5%
Polish 5.1%

Winnetka

German 26.3%
Irish 21.1%
English/American 18.4%
Italian 6.3%
Polish 6%

[Docere]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah... I think this is because the WASP identity has faded so much, particularly in the big northern cities. The traits of affluent WASP culture have just become synonymous with being upper middle class and white. You probably have to go to the South to find the surviving remnants of true WASP culture. I still think of a place like Fairfax County in northern Virginia as being much more WASPy than a place like Westchester County. Even Montgomery County, Md seemed EXTREMELY WASPy when I was a kid, but I'm not so sure it holds up to that today. There's also still a bit of affluent WASPiness in the Carolinas and Georgia.

DC is far WASPier than the NY area, though Montgomery County has a very large Jewish population.

20815 (Chevy Chase MD)

English/American 15.1%
German 13.3%
Irish 12.9%
Russian/Eastern European 8.2%
Italian 7.9%

McLean VA

English/American 16.9%
German 13.9%
Irish 13.7%
Italian 7.7%

Great Falls VA

English/American 20.4%
Irish 13.3%
German 12%
Italian 7.2%

[Crawford]

Re. Chicago North Shore, pretty sure Glencoe and Highland Park are more Jewish than Kenilworth and Winnetka (and Wilmette). But obviously these cultural barriers have faded somewhat.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by homebucket

I’ve never heard of the term WASP until SSP. Out here white people are just “white people”. From someone who’s never heard of the term before it sounds like WASP is a term for rich white people.

I became familiar with the term WASP in the 8th grade because I had a joke book that had WASP jokes in it (among other kinds of jokes), haha! But, I didn't know what a WASP was... so I worked the nerve up to ask a teacher I liked (and kind of had a crush on) and asked him about it, and showed him the joke book---and he started laughing and reading the book. But he explained to me what a WASP is.

The Bay Area has its traditionally WASP areas, but maybe they're more "Old Money" than WASP, like Hillsborough and Atherton. Marin County becoming a center of wealth didn't happen until later.

In the LA area, Pasadena and San Marino traditionally used to be WASPy and Old Money, but that has changed. San Marino became very Asian (there was that Taiwanese and Chinese "parachute kid" trend from the 1990s-2010 or so) and the wealthy areas of Pasadena became more "new money" and "Hollywood" (though the homes are still quite tasteful). Bel-Air and Hancock Park used to also be somewhat Old Money, but new money and people in the film industry eventually moved in. Beverly Hills was always a mix of wealthy types, because early on, they allowed Jews and people in the film industry to live there, whereas the other wealthy neighborhoods still had those deed restrictions.

Aside from country clubs, there are also the social clubs that were originally gentlemen's clubs, like the Jonathan Club and California Club in LA, and the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena. I think they are still very exclusive clubs, the kind where you have to know a member to become a member or be invited to become a member kind of thing. The California Club didn't even start allowing women until the late 1980s or something. I attended a semi-formal/black-tie optional benefit at the California Club many years ago when I worked for a non-profit, and that was an interesting experience. It's probably something I'll never experience again, haha. The non-profit I worked for had some donors in the film/TV industry, so you saw a few of those, and you saw a lot of "Housewives of Fill-in-the-Blank" type of women too, and they had a silent auction and an actual auction where the non-profit even hired a professional auctioneer.

OK, enough of my tangent!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

The Bay Area has its traditionally WASP areas, but maybe they're more "Old Money" than WASP

this may be at the root of a much of the disconnect in this thread.

in the northeast it sounds like "WASP" is still used as a stand in for "old money"/"the establishment".

elsewhere in the nation, my impression is that "old money" is the more common term these days as WASP has gone by the wayside as the "ASP" in WASP has lost much of its meaning, if it even ever had a great deal of standing.

[Bailey]

Originally Posted by homebucket

I’ve never heard of the term WASP until SSP. Out here white people are just “white people”. From someone who’s never heard of the term before it sounds like WASP is a term for rich white people.

Wow..it's one of the strongest terms in the Unites States and has been since before we were even an official country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants

[Bailey]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Actually, looking it up online, WASP was a term more or less invented by a handful of academics in the 1950s and 1960s. Though of course it was describing a group which had existed long before but didn't have a catchy name. The use as a pejorative took off soon after.

Originally the W stood for wealthy, not white, which makes more sense, since the Anglo-Saxon pretty much implies whiteness anyway.

Not sure about the term, but the concept of preserving WASP nation/culture was definitely enforced.

Prohibition was definitely aimed at the non-WASP immigrants

[Zapatan]

Originally Posted by homebucket

I’ve never heard of the term WASP until SSP. Out here white people are just “white people”. From someone who’s never heard of the term before it sounds like WASP is a term for rich white people.

It means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, so more or less someone of English (maybe Germanic) descent.

Historically they're much different than say Irish, Italian, Slavic, Jewish, Arab etc.

"White" is a made up social construct anyway

[Docere]

Greenwich CT

English/American 16.9%
Italian 16.9%
Irish 14.1%
German 9.9%

[JMKeynes]

Two of the richest residents of Greenwich are Ray Dalio and Steven A. Cohen, neither of whom are WASPs, though Dalio could pass for one.

[MolsonExport]

San Juan?

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

It's is a little funny to me how many of you use the word "WASP" very differently than I do.

I went to a prestigious northshore catholic "college prep" high school and it was as preppy as you would imagine any wealthy college prep school to be, but the "WASP" label was not a term that anyone in my school would've identified with. We were overtly Catholic, and thus not ""WASP" by definition.

Well, no devout Catholic would consider themself a WASP.

Across large populations, whether counties or especially metros, you'll have lots of nominal Catholics who are secular or go to church every now and then. But religion is definitely more a "deal-breaker" than ethnicity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

this may be at the root of a much of the disconnect in this thread.

in the northeast it sounds like "WASP" is still used as a stand in for "old money".

elsewhere in the nation, my impression is that "old money" is the more common term these days as WASP has gone by the wayside as the "ASP" in WASP has lost much of its meaning, if it ever had a great deal of standing.

I don't even know if WASP is synonymous with "old money" here in NY. Funny enough, WASP in NY might be more accurately associated with "ran out of money" lol. When I think NY WASPs, I think of names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Helmsley, Roosevelt, etc. Families that might have a little money stuck in a sock drawer somewhere, but don't still register among the richest people in the world or even this area. OTOH, in the Detroit area WASP would still be analogous to "old money" in my mind. Names like Ford, Dodge, Firestone, etc., that still live in one of those old Grosse Pointe lakefront estates.

The NY area probably had a much more dramatic cutover from WASP social groups as the upper class than other parts of the country. Upper Westchester and Fairfield counties were clearly WASP territory in the mid-20th century, but the current iteration of NY elite (both business and political) are either "ethnic" white or racial minorities outright.

[Quixote]

The late JFK Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette were a great example of preppy Catholics who were culturally WASP and probably had lots of Jewish friends.

JFK Jr. grew up in the White House, lived in Georgetown for a few years after his father's assassination, and then settled on the Upper East Side. He was 75% Irish Catholic. His father (JFK) was from Boston, while his mother (Jacqueline Bouvier) was born in Southampton, NY to a family of pedigree and raised Catholic. She was half Irish on one side and French, Scottish, and English on the other. She grew up in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and McLean, VA, and her step-father had a home in Newport, RI.

Carolyn Bessette was born in White Plains, NY (Westchester) and grew up in Greenwich (Fairfield). She was half Italian and at least part French-Canadian, and was raised Catholic; blonde hair and blue eyes. She attended Boston University and then worked as a saleswoman at Calvin Klein at the Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton, MA before moving to Manhattan.

The couple died when their plane crashed while on the way to Martha's Vineyard, where they were going to drop off Carolyn's sister, before attending a family wedding at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port (Cape Cod).

That describes a very elite, upper-crust lifestyle unique to the Northeast, and it's pretty much as WASPy as it gets.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I had a former co-worker who grew up in Erie. He said because of his dad he presumed "fuckingpresbyterians" was one word until he was like eight.

that's great, very familiar to me

Originally Posted by Crawford

This. The judge doofus in Caddyshack is a perfect caricature.

Country clubs are a good present-day proxy for these cultural divides. There are still WASP clubs, Jewish clubs and Catholic clubs even though polite society doesn't talk about it.

In Manhattan, the Knickerbocker Club and the Racquet and Tennis Club are still WASP. Bloomberg was the first Jewish member of the Racquet and Tennis Club.

In the Hamptons, the Southampton Bathing Corp and the Maidstone Club are WASP.

Of course these are cultural cleavages nowadays, mostly. There are very few clubs where you won't find a single member with a differing background. WASP mostly means old money gatekeeping from perceived nouveaux excess.

Yeah, when "the first _______ (insert female, Catholic, Polish, Italian, Jewish, Hispanic, black, etc.) member" is a thing, you can be pretty sure that it's a WASPy place.


And think about how it was a huge deal that JFK was the nation's first Catholic president. Every single president from 1776 to 1961 was a WASP. And then there wasn't another non-WASP until Obama... and Biden is only the 3rd non-WASP out of 46!

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah... I think this is because the WASP identity has faded so much, particularly in the big northern cities. The traits of affluent WASP culture have just become synonymous with being upper middle class and white. You probably have to go to the South to find the surviving remnants of true WASP culture. I still think of a place like Fairfax County in northern Virginia as being much more WASPy than a place like Westchester County. Even Montgomery County, Md seemed EXTREMELY WASPy when I was a kid, but I'm not so sure it holds up to that today. There's also still a bit of affluent WASPiness in the Carolinas and Georgia.

I think that it's still alive and well, albeit in smaller circles and much quieter. There's really no outward repudiation of Catholics or Polish or Italians being part of the "upper class" these days, but someone's last name will still raise an eyebrow if it doesn't fit with the historical, perceived "American" norm.

You can definitely still experience it in southern cities. Charleston, New Orleans, Dallas, and scores of smaller cities are places where it feels quite present to me.

But

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

this may be at the root of a much of the disconnect in this thread.

in the northeast it sounds like "WASP" is still used as a stand in for "old money"/"the establishment".

elsewhere in the nation, my impression is that "old money" is the more common term these days as WASP has gone by the wayside as the "ASP" in WASP has lost much of its meaning, if it even ever had a great deal of standing.

I think that the terms are somewhat interchangeable, considering that in order to have "old money" one had to be white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. And there is still a below-the-surface "nativist" attitude that exists in northeastern states particularly... like if your last name is Lombardi, Jablonski, or Finkelstein... well, you're not really American.