Is “WASP” culture still a thing?

[Anonymous]

As a poor midwestern Irish Catholic I read this whole thread to understand what WASP is and I still don’t understand. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement (other than that I am not a WASP 😁).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Richmond has a huge contingent. They belong to the Country Club of Virginia (CCV) and send their children k-12 to St. Catherine’s/St. Christopher’s.

Also, Myers Park area of Charlotte.

And these are just the towns I know personally.

Sending kids to catholic school is not a thing that WASPs do.

Not the PP, but St Catherine’s and St Christopher’s are both affiliated with the Episcopal church, not Catholic.

They’re literally owned and run by the Episcopal diocese of Virginia. They’re part of the “church schools” group (like SSSAS).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

Officer in the continental army isn’t nothing…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

Bushes had money before oil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

The Bushes had money long before H.W. Went to Texas. That family is as WASPy as it gets, I know members from several branches and they check all the boxes, including going back to Mayflower days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

The Bushes had money long before H.W. Went to Texas. That family is as WASPy as it gets, I know members from several branches and they check all the boxes, including going back to Mayflower days.

And if you count Bar, she’s a descendant of Franklin Pierce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

The Bushes are very much in the model of old school WASPs. Family made fortune in Ohio in the 19th century and resettled back in Connecticut, intermarrying with other Wasp families. GHWB was the ideal specimen, not just in background, but in mannerism and attitude, of the reserved New England WASPs. His mother used to constantly tell him not to say "I" too much. It was GHWB who left CT to move to Texas to make his own way in life, which is also another WASP characteristic.

The confusion on this thread stems from that there are two interpretations for WASPs. First is based on the concept of a very small and privileged minority of old families in the northeastern cities, especially NY, Philadelphia and Boston, traced back to the 18th century and whose descendants provided a disproportionate share of the nation's leadership in civics, culture, finance and even politics up through the 1950s. They were the people of the New England boarding schools and Harvard and Yale and eating clubs at Princeton and summering in Maine or Nantucket and so on. Over time they developed a reputation for a somewhat idiosyncratic, self-effacious, highly self restrained and distant personalities that shunned attention, with a strong focus on mannerism, virtues and ethical behaviors and fair play.

Then you have the much broader upper middle class of professionals and finance people all across the east coast and the Midwest, who took a great deal of their social cues from the upper class WASPs without having the same ancestry or wealth. These are the people who really gave us the "preppy" look and enshrined the vaguely Anglo-Saxon decor as the idealized taste, but with an affluence coming through more obviously than that of the idealized discreet WASPs. It doesn't matter if your ancestry is really Polish or a mixture, like most people are these days, or Catholic rather than Protestant, or even Jewish, it's become a socio-economic cultural ethos based on self-satisfied aspirational comforts and professionalism. The American bourgeoisie, when you think about it, and that's why you find them all over the place, not just in certain areas of the East.

Most people's encounters with "WASPs" is really with this second group of people, and which has always been the case.

[Anonymous]

My grandparents drank a lot, ate very little and shopped only at Whole Foods and Neiman Marcus. They read lots of books, listened to NPR and donated enough money to educational charities to get their name on buildings. Now their kids still read a lot of books, listen to podcasts and donate enough money to green-energy charities to get their names on boards and still shop at Whole Foods.

[Anonymous]

Oh and still eat very little. WASPs prize nothing more than wispy-thin, small-boned women because they value nothing more than self-control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

The Bushes are very much in the model of old school WASPs. Family made fortune in Ohio in the 19th century and resettled back in Connecticut, intermarrying with other Wasp families. GHWB was the ideal specimen, not just in background, but in mannerism and attitude, of the reserved New England WASPs. His mother used to constantly tell him not to say "I" too much. It was GHWB who left CT to move to Texas to make his own way in life, which is also another WASP characteristic.

The confusion on this thread stems from that there are two interpretations for WASPs. First is based on the concept of a very small and privileged minority of old families in the northeastern cities, especially NY, Philadelphia and Boston, traced back to the 18th century and whose descendants provided a disproportionate share of the nation's leadership in civics, culture, finance and even politics up through the 1950s. They were the people of the New England boarding schools and Harvard and Yale and eating clubs at Princeton and summering in Maine or Nantucket and so on. Over time they developed a reputation for a somewhat idiosyncratic, self-effacious, highly self restrained and distant personalities that shunned attention, with a strong focus on mannerism, virtues and ethical behaviors and fair play.

Then you have the much broader upper middle class of professionals and finance people all across the east coast and the Midwest, who took a great deal of their social cues from the upper class WASPs without having the same ancestry or wealth. These are the people who really gave us the "preppy" look and enshrined the vaguely Anglo-Saxon decor as the idealized taste, but with an affluence coming through more obviously than that of the idealized discreet WASPs. It doesn't matter if your ancestry is really Polish or a mixture, like most people are these days, or Catholic rather than Protestant, or even Jewish, it's become a socio-economic cultural ethos based on self-satisfied aspirational comforts and professionalism. The American bourgeoisie, when you think about it, and that's why you find them all over the place, not just in certain areas of the East.

Most people's encounters with "WASPs" is really with this second group of people, and which has always been the case.

I refuse to countenance this attempt at JAP erasure

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wasp culture has become synonymous with UMC success.
Can join a country club?
Send kids to elite private?
Do you “summer”?
Live in the best enclave, with appropriate zoning? ( obviously this means no multi family dwellings ( exception: NYC)
That’s wasp culture.
Simply shorthand for making it.

No, it’s much more than that. No new money. Your family has to have been WASP’s for generations.

Yep, hence the comment above about the Bushes, Roosevelts, and Tafts being the only 20th century WASP presidents. Particularly the Bushes.

Not the Bushes, they're newish oil money.

The Roosevelts for sure. There's a joke about FDR, that at his boarding school he was beaten up because he was small, then at reunions they hated him because he was a "traitor to his class" with the New Deal.

Ugh. I’m so glad I don’t know people like you 😂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WASP culture is less of a money thing and more of a mindset.

The clothing marketed to WASPs is more of a marketing thing.
Real WASP's will wear the same blazer and shoes for 20 years.

Many WASP kids go to public schools. If they are good public schools then they offer value to the family. WASP families have
discreet old money because they never buy anything new.

A WASP woman would never be caught wearing a Kardashian
style purse.

WASPs typically don't travel on European vacations.
They will vacation at Grandma's summer house in
Rehoboth or at the Jersey shore that has been in the family for generations. Or....like the Bushes....vacation in the
northeast.

WASPS vacation on the Jersey Shore? And here I thought I was starting to figure out what this WASP thing was.

No. Maine or Europe. Maybe Nantucket or the Hamptons. Cape Cod didn’t seem like a thing at all.

[Anonymous]

First is based on the concept of a very small and privileged minority of old families in the northeastern cities, especially NY, Philadelphia and Boston, traced back to the 18th century and whose descendants provided a disproportionate share of the nation's leadership in civics, culture, finance and even politics up through the 1950s. They were the people of the New England boarding schools and Harvard and Yale and eating clubs at Princeton and summering in Maine or Nantucket and so on

Yes, this person is right.

Look for someone whose dad or granddad was a member of the Society of Colonial Wars. THAT is a bona fide WASP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My grandparents drank a lot, ate very little and shopped only at Whole Foods and Neiman Marcus. They read lots of books, listened to NPR and donated enough money to educational charities to get their name on buildings. Now their kids still read a lot of books, listen to podcasts and donate enough money to green-energy charities to get their names on boards and still shop at Whole Foods.

How young are your grandparents to only shop at Whole Foods? And what does any of this have to do with the thread?