"WASP" decline: two papers
Kaufmann, Eric. "
The Decline of the WASP?: Anglo-Protestant Ethnicity and the American Nation-State"
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, Washington Hilton, Washington, DC, Sep 01, 2005
. 2009-02-05 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p40195_index.html>
This paper argues that the United States possessed a dominant ethnic group or 'core ethnie' (Smith 1986; 1991) like most European and Asian nations. This ethnie was intimately linked to the nation's identity. This WASP (or Anglo-Protestant) ethnic group went into decline largely because it failed to continue processes of Anglo-conformity and immigration restriction which were integral to the maintenance of its hegemony. Reform originated largely within the WASP community among religious and secular liberals in the first half of the 20th c., which facilitated external challenges from subaltern groups.
Wright, Theodore. "The Identity and Changing Status of Former Elite Minorities: the Contrasting cases of North Indian Muslims and American WASPS" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, Washington Hilton, Washington, DC, Sep 01, 2005 . 2009-02-05 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p40194_index.html>
My paper, unlike the others on this panel, approaches the subject of “core ethnic groups” comparatively. My research focus for forty-five years has been not on my own ascribed identity group, the so-called White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) of North America, but on the 12% of the post-independence population of India who are Muslims by religion, whom I have categorized as a “former elite minority”. (1) The comparison occurred to me at the time of the publication of Peter Schrag’s “Decline of the WASP” (2) and several other popular books with the same theme. It explained why I found attractive a group generally viewed unsympathetically by upwardly mobile academics as “oppressors” of minorities. Other examples of this type are the Manchus of China, the Tatars in Russia, former European colonists in Kenya and Algeria, the Afrikaners of South Africa since 1994, the Watutsi of Rwanda and the Arabs of Zanzibar; Fijians and Maoris in Oceania, in Latin America possibly one could count the Spanish-descended Creoles after the Mestizos seized power from them; in North America the French-Canadians; and in Europe the Anglo-Irish and the various German, Hungarian and Turkish communities which were left outside of their former homelands by defeat and boundary changes after the two world wars, most noteably including the Sudeten Germans until their expulsion from Czechoslovakia in 1945.
In terms of Richard Schermerhorn’s (3) fourfold typology of ethnicities within a matrix of power and numbers: dominant majorities, dominant elites, subordinate mass subjects and subordinate minorities, these groups have slipped by loss of political dominance from Schermerhorn’s “dominant elite” to his “subordinate minority”. [. . .]
I'm not overly impressed with either paper, though Kaufmann's at least offers a reasonable framework for further discussion. The Wright paper sounds interesting enough in concept but descends into conflating the blending of NW European ethnies among old-stock Americans with interracial marriage, and bizarrely arguing "WASPs" will maintain dominance by mixing themselves out of existence.
Thanks for pointing out that Wright paper. I really liked Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks & White Liberals", which has a number of ethnic archetypes, and Amy Chua's World on Fire. I'm also reminded of Mencius Moldbug, who seems to seek out groups like the Northern Irish, southern Redeemers, Afrikaners, Rhodies, piedes-noires, Turkish imperialists and other hated ex-dominants with which to sympathize. He'd also say Israel fits the pattern, though I imagine you'd have something to say about that.
ReplyDeleteA more complete version of Wright's paper is available at least in part at Google books (in Rethinking ethnicity, ed. Kaufmann).
ReplyDeleteI've been slowly coming around to the view that the old WASPS lost their hegemony because, excepting a few outliers, they just didn't care to sustain it. Matters of ideology and business consumed their energies while an increasingly aristocratic insouciance was adopted toward matters of ethnic survival and cultural continuity.
ReplyDeleteAs I write this I am reminded of American WASPS like Henry Ford, who reached out to negros and arabs as a source of cheap labor for his factories. The betrayal of one's nation was daily practice for these myopic idiots.
That's essentially Kaufmann's view ("WASPs" did it to themselves), but I don't think that's the whole story.
ReplyDeleteNo analysis can afford to ignore the role of the nature of the resistance that was put up, ie the Lothrop Stoddards and the Madison Grants. That left intellectual opponents no choice but to resort the most extreme race denial, for the binary logic of race mattering as much as the nordicists insisted meant the immigrants would have to be sent packing. The nordicists appealed to reason and lost; the race-deniers appealed to emotion and won.
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant by "appealed to emotion" is that although their arguments were intellectual, they had the advantage of appealing to what most people want to believe.
ReplyDelete"The nordicists appealed to reason and lost; the race-deniers appealed to emotion and won."No, the race-deniers appealed to capital, and ethnic interest and won.
ReplyDeleteDesmond Jones
I was talking about the intellectual battle. You're not seriously going to pretend normal human emotion is absent from that arena, are you?
ReplyDeleteWhat intellectual battle? Boaz's data was fraudulent. It's like the Sierra Club, where the environment was definitely impacted by immigration until some guy gives you a $100 million dollars with the proviso that you shut f*ck up about immigration. In that case you'll accept any lie to show immigration is good for the environment.
ReplyDeleteDesmond Jones