What is a WASP?
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  What is a WASP?
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #25 on: August 14, 2014, 03:55:42 PM »

Without a regional breakdown, it's hard to know.  How many in the Northeast vs. the South, for example?
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #26 on: August 15, 2014, 01:02:05 AM »

What attracted Northern Irish to Pennsylvania post-1800?

In Philadelphia, the northern Irish-born population was about 2/3 of the Irish Free State-born in 1930.  In Pittsburgh it was over 50%.

In most of the other big Northern cities it was usually about 15-20%.

Also, the Welsh population in PA was quite big.

Re: Philadelphia. It is useful to look at the ocean line routes from this period. People tended to emigrate on the cheapest route and with the easiest emigration process.  One branch of my ancestors went to Montreal first and only a few years later did they make their way to NYC. (this was in the 20's)  Also just because they were born in the North of Ireland, it would be flawed to assume them Protestant.  After independence, partition, civil war and then the sectarian violence, may Catholics in the north decamped from the Stormont state.

With Pittsburgh with Irish and Welsh in PA, you have people following jobs- whether they be miners or in the steel mills.

It would be flawed to assume that all people born in Northern Ireland were Protestant but certainly many were, and certainly a much, much higher percentage than those born in "Irish Free State." 
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patrick1
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« Reply #27 on: August 16, 2014, 12:11:10 AM »

Educational attainment among ethno-religious groups ca. 1980:

After Jews and Asians (too small to be broken down further then), Scottish Protestants were the best educated, Irish Catholics had just pulled ahead of English Protestants. Irish Protestants were further down.

http://faculty.washington.edu/charles/pubs/theeducationattainment.pdf

You can also see that Irish Protestants were more "old stock" than Irish Catholics (4th generation+) though by no means their immigration ceased.  Though we often hear about "40 million Irish Americans" the descendants of post-1845 Irish Catholic immigrants is probably more about the size of the Italian American population in the US.

From census data 35 million claim Irish ancestry while 5 million claim the Scotch Irish category.  There was roughly over 5 million Irish immigrants to the US in the period from 1830-1970. This doesnt capture significant Irish Catholic lineage population who first came to Canada or England and Scotland.  Also of note there was Irish Catholic lineage well before this in colonial period like General John Sullivan, Commodore Barry and Boston massacre victim Patrick Carr to name a few. The raw numbers started to increase in the Erie Canal construction. 

17 million claim Italian ancestry. Over 4 million Italians came to America but you double counting and there was also substantial permanent returns to Italy.  The Irish tended to stay in America for good while many Italians came to make some money and so many returned1.  You also dont get the generational multiplying effect as bulk of Italian generation is a couple years later than that of Irish. 

1Statistics by nationality are quite striking. According to a report in 1908 comparing the departures in 1908 with the arrivals of 1907, 61% of the Southern Italians returned home. Croatians and Slovenians (59.8%), Slovaks (56.1%) and Hungarians (48.7%) also had high return rates. The lowest rate, 5.1%, belonged to the Jews (categorized as "Hebrews"). This is understandable since they fled the pogroms to save their lives and had nowhere to return. Surprisingly, when you think of all the nostalgic songs about their homeland, the Irish rarely went back — only 6.3%. Others with a low return rate were Czechs (7.8%), English (10.4%) and Scandinavians (10.9%). In the middle range were Germans (15.5%), Serbs and Bulgarians (21.9%), Finns (23.3%), Poles (33.9%) and Northern Italians (37.8%). Interestingly enough, the Irish and the Swedish were also groups with a very high percentage of woman immigrants.
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patrick1
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« Reply #28 on: August 16, 2014, 12:39:27 AM »


I wonder how many of the Irish-American Protestants are descendants of Church of Ireland members (as opposed to Ulster-Scots Presbyterians). Also there would certainly be a sizable number of converts from Catholicism by 1980.

A lot less. They were much more apt to go east to Great Britain.  The reason the Catholic and Protestant dissenter nationalists found common cause in the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798 was because the established church held such power. The Anglo Irish owned the best and vast majority of all land, were the gentry and dominated the political landscape by law. It failed in part by the stirring of sectarian fears (some justifiable). Subsequently whitehall was able to force through the Act of Union on Ireland.
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they don't love you like i love you
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« Reply #29 on: August 16, 2014, 11:47:46 PM »

Probably best to not over-analyze this.  I mean for me William F Buckley and the Kennedy clan were way more WASP in there upbringing than any Southrons. Boarding schools, Harvard-Yale, the country club, Newport, the Vineyard, white shoe firms.  The exclusivity of these WASP bastions are gone, so the term really doesnt mean anything anymore- like BRTD's favorite Catholic vote or Reagan Republican.

I assume you mean "Reagan Democrat" (though yes, "Reagan Republican" is a pointless and stupid term today, it'd be like someone calling themselves an "FDR Democrat"), but yes, WASP is a meaningless distinction today. As far as I'm concerned if you're white, you're white, the end. Yes obviously the region of the country and if that person lives in or is from an urban/suburban/rural background matters a lot, but those are only tangentially related to ethnicity.
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Sol
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« Reply #30 on: August 17, 2014, 12:00:04 AM »

Probably best to not over-analyze this.  I mean for me William F Buckley and the Kennedy clan were way more WASP in there upbringing than any Southrons. Boarding schools, Harvard-Yale, the country club, Newport, the Vineyard, white shoe firms.  The exclusivity of these WASP bastions are gone, so the term really doesnt mean anything anymore- like BRTD's favorite Catholic vote or Reagan Republican.

I assume you mean "Reagan Democrat" (though yes, "Reagan Republican" is a pointless and stupid term today, it'd be like someone calling themselves an "FDR Democrat"), but yes, WASP is a meaningless distinction today. As far as I'm concerned if you're white, you're white, the end.

There are quite a few culturally distinct groups though. Bosniaks and Jews for example. Even Italian-Americans often have a certain degree of cultural separation if they live in certain areas (Howard Beach and akin NYC areas spring to mind, but I think some suburbs in NJ are like this as well?)
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they don't love you like i love you
BRTD
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« Reply #31 on: August 17, 2014, 12:35:13 AM »

You're talking about areas though. Imagine for example a middle class suburb in Ohio. Germans, Scandinavians, Irish, Italians, English, etc have basically no difference and all live in the same areas. Besides how many whites in the US are entirely of one ancestry?
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Simfan34
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« Reply #32 on: August 18, 2014, 09:58:27 AM »
« Edited: August 25, 2014, 01:19:21 AM by Governor Simfan »

The good guys, who ruled before, and shall return to rule again.
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Rockefeller GOP
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« Reply #33 on: August 18, 2014, 06:44:40 PM »

This forum uses it in a bizarre way I'd never seen before...  I always thought of it as exactly what it stands for:
White (obvious enough)
Anglo Saxon (English/German/Northern European with fair features)
Protestant (mainline denomination, not evangelical).
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Simfan34
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« Reply #34 on: August 25, 2014, 01:19:07 AM »

I've never heard of this "Celtic thesis" but I like it.
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palandio
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« Reply #35 on: August 25, 2014, 07:36:35 AM »

This forum uses it in a bizarre way I'd never seen before...  I always thought of it as exactly what it stands for:
White (obvious enough)
Anglo Saxon (English/German/Northern European with fair features)
Protestant (mainline denomination, not evangelical).
I've heard that definition a lot, but
1. In which way are Germans and Northern Europeans Anglo Saxons?
2. Isn't Anglo Saxon almost redundant in this case, because how many White Protestants are there historically that are not British, German, Dutch or Northern European? (Huguenots? Hussites? Valdesi? Sobozinians?)
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Torie
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« Reply #36 on: August 25, 2014, 06:53:31 PM »
« Edited: August 26, 2014, 04:46:33 AM by Torie »

This forum uses it in a bizarre way I'd never seen before...  I always thought of it as exactly what it stands for:
White (obvious enough)
Anglo Saxon (English/German/Northern European with fair features)
Protestant (mainline denomination, not evangelical).
I've heard that definition a lot, but
1. In which way are Germans and Northern Europeans Anglo Saxons?
2. Isn't Anglo Saxon almost redundant in this case, because how many White Protestants are there historically that are not British, German, Dutch or Northern European? (Huguenots? Hussites? Valdesi? Sobozinians?)

Anglo Saxon is but one Teutonic tribe (granted, the English more or less are a meld of Anglo Saxon and Norman (another Teutonic tribe). But a definition of WASP that is co-extensive with Protestants with Teutonic genetics, is perhaps pretty accurate (except perhaps for the Celt Protestant Scots and Welsh). Of most import vis a vis the US, is the issue is whether Scots-Irish are considered WASP. There are millions and millions of them, and they were the Celtic Scots colonists imported from Scotland into N. Ireland by William of Orange (thus they called themselves "Orangemen"), to help "pacify" Ireland. The Scots Irish have a rather distinctive cultural style and heritage, light years apart from the flinty Bible toting highly educated relative speaking, New England Yankees - the former being just perfect for the frontier, which is why they were favored as immigrants in the first half of the 19th century.
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patrick1
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« Reply #37 on: August 25, 2014, 07:17:17 PM »

Good post Torie. One point of clarification I would add is that the plantations of Ireland started much earlier.  There were plantations in the Irish Midlands under the Catholic Mary and Elizabethan plantations.  These were largely English settlements. A seminal moment in Irish history was The Flight of the Earls in 1607, where the Gaelic chieftains decamped to Europe after their defeat in the revolution of 1601.  This left a power vacuum where the land was scooped up. The private plantations in Antrim and Down were much more successful than the other crown plantations in the rest of Ulster (borne out in demographic maps to this day).  This served dual purpose because in got rid of restive Scots on the northern border and destroyed the Irish power base in the usually rebellious North. The massacre of those settlers in the civil war years of the 1640's still holds power in the Protestant community and there are banners commemorating this at every Orange parade still.  The Cromwell conquest solidified the new Protestant landownership in the provinces of Munster and Connaught.   (Leinster has been English or Anglo Norman dominated since 1270)  King Billy's defeat of Séamus an Chaca' was merely the final death knell.  As I noted above though, the dissenter Protestant community were not much better off than the Catholics and a large reason why so many Ulstermen came to America.  Thanks for giving me a forum to babble Smiley
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TheDeadFlagBlues
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« Reply #38 on: August 26, 2014, 02:15:34 PM »

WASP is a term that confers class status, political identity and secularism or liberal Protestantism in the United States and it's increasingly unrelated to having "ASP" descent. For instance: in 2014, Vermont dairy farmers are far more likely to have purely Yankee roots than blue blood families in Connecticut or Boston, who are increasingly likely to have some Irish or Italian or Jewish ancestry. Yet, Vermont dairy farmers are rarely described as "WASPs" while CEOs, CFOs and corporate lawyers will oftentimes be described as WASPs even if they have a non-WASP last name.

William F. Buckley is the modern symbol of WASPs and he's an Irish Catholic. George Wallace is portrayed as the enemy of WASPs by the history books and he is an unspoiled WASP.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #39 on: August 26, 2014, 06:58:16 PM »

WASP is a term that confers class status, political identity and secularism or liberal Protestantism in the United States and it's increasingly unrelated to having "ASP" descent. For instance: in 2014, Vermont dairy farmers are far more likely to have purely Yankee roots than blue blood families in Connecticut or Boston, who are increasingly likely to have some Irish or Italian or Jewish ancestry. Yet, Vermont dairy farmers are rarely described as "WASPs" while CEOs, CFOs and corporate lawyers will oftentimes be described as WASPs even if they have a non-WASP last name.

William F. Buckley is the modern symbol of WASPs and he's an Irish Catholic. George Wallace is portrayed as the enemy of WASPs by the history books and he is an unspoiled WASP.

Good points.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #40 on: August 26, 2014, 09:05:30 PM »

WASP is a term that confers class status, political identity and secularism or liberal Protestantism in the United States and it's increasingly unrelated to having "ASP" descent. For instance: in 2014, Vermont dairy farmers are far more likely to have purely Yankee roots than blue blood families in Connecticut or Boston, who are increasingly likely to have some Irish or Italian or Jewish ancestry. Yet, Vermont dairy farmers are rarely described as "WASPs" while CEOs, CFOs and corporate lawyers will oftentimes be described as WASPs even if they have a non-WASP last name.

William F. Buckley is the modern symbol of WASPs and he's an Irish Catholic. George Wallace is portrayed as the enemy of WASPs by the history books and he is an unspoiled WASP.

The WASPiest people I know are Catholics of various stripes. FML.
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Person Man
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« Reply #41 on: August 28, 2014, 03:09:53 PM »

WASP is a term that confers class status, political identity and secularism or liberal Protestantism in the United States and it's increasingly unrelated to having "ASP" descent. For instance: in 2014, Vermont dairy farmers are far more likely to have purely Yankee roots than blue blood families in Connecticut or Boston, who are increasingly likely to have some Irish or Italian or Jewish ancestry. Yet, Vermont dairy farmers are rarely described as "WASPs" while CEOs, CFOs and corporate lawyers will oftentimes be described as WASPs even if they have a non-WASP last name.

William F. Buckley is the modern symbol of WASPs and he's an Irish Catholic. George Wallace is portrayed as the enemy of WASPs by the history books and he is an unspoiled WASP.

Good points.

This. Though there are Germans and Huguenots in Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia.
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jimrtex
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« Reply #42 on: August 30, 2014, 06:57:02 AM »

Good post Torie. One point of clarification I would add is that the plantations of Ireland started much earlier.  There were plantations in the Irish Midlands under the Catholic Mary and Elizabethan plantations.  These were largely English settlements. A seminal moment in Irish history was The Flight of the Earls in 1607, where the Gaelic chieftains decamped to Europe after their defeat in the revolution of 1601.  This left a power vacuum where the land was scooped up. The private plantations in Antrim and Down were much more successful than the other crown plantations in the rest of Ulster (borne out in demographic maps to this day).  This served dual purpose because in got rid of restive Scots on the northern border and destroyed the Irish power base in the usually rebellious North. The massacre of those settlers in the civil war years of the 1640's still holds power in the Protestant community and there are banners commemorating this at every Orange parade still.  The Cromwell conquest solidified the new Protestant landownership in the provinces of Munster and Connaught.   (Leinster has been English or Anglo Norman dominated since 1270)  King Billy's defeat of Séamus an Chaca' was merely the final death knell.  As I noted above though, the dissenter Protestant community were not much better off than the Catholics and a large reason why so many Ulstermen came to America.  Thanks for giving me a forum to babble Smiley
William of Orange was seen as a folk hero in America.  Thomas Paine compared George Washington to William, when trying to rally the Americans at Valley Forge.  William (or Parliament) also undid the attempted consolidation of New England.   The Glorious Revolution was seen as a restoration of democracy after usurpation under the Stuarts, and later betrayed by the Hanovers.  The Bill of Rights added to the US Constitution is quite similar in form to the British version.
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patrick1
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« Reply #43 on: August 31, 2014, 09:10:56 PM »

Well, sure the colonies largely benefited from the greater autonomy brought on by William and Mary.   However, were you a Highlander or Jacobin you were marginalized and dispossessed and even slaughtered- Glencoe.  And closer to home, that autonomy was forfeited as seen in Acts of Union. Insert relevant to the victor go the spoils quote.



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Brittain33
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« Reply #44 on: September 02, 2014, 11:28:01 AM »

Well, sure the colonies largely benefited from the greater autonomy brought on by William and Mary.   However, were you a Highlander or Jacobin you were marginalized and dispossessed and even slaughtered- Glencoe.  And closer to home, that autonomy was forfeited as seen in Acts of Union. Insert relevant to the victor go the spoils quote.





The maps are missing a legend. Is this land held by Catholics?
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patrick1
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« Reply #45 on: September 02, 2014, 05:30:20 PM »

Yeah, sorry that is percentage of land owned by Catholics.  Although this really isnt a sectarian issue that I'm trying to raise here.  So much of the land was held by so few and as time progressed these large landholders remained distant.  A lot of the the Protestant tenant farmers and smallholders got a raw deal in the imbalanced power structure that was created from Whitehall. In America you could own better land for the price of being a susbistence tenant.  That is why many Scotch Irish, Anglo Irish and "natiive"  alike Catholics with means emigrated.  Of course, this power strucutre also existed in the the rest of British Isles too.
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Chancellor Tanterterg
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« Reply #46 on: September 04, 2014, 10:49:53 PM »

Every so often, the topic comes up whether the forum is biased against Republicans in more than just a numerical sense. I think the answer depends on the type of poster.

Intelligent conservative posters who adopt a friendly, conciliatory tone or are ideologically heterodox (not necessarily both) are generally pretty well treated. On the flip side, obvious trolls or dumb posters are generally recognized as such on the D side. But posters who are well-informed, articulate, and at the same time stridently partisan and aggressive often get much more criticism when they are Republican than they are Democratic.
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Rockefeller GOP
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« Reply #47 on: September 05, 2014, 11:37:13 AM »

This forum uses it in a bizarre way I'd never seen before...  I always thought of it as exactly what it stands for:
White (obvious enough)
Anglo Saxon (English/German/Northern European with fair features)
Protestant (mainline denomination, not evangelical).
I've heard that definition a lot, but
1. In which way are Germans and Northern Europeans Anglo Saxons?
2. Isn't Anglo Saxon almost redundant in this case, because how many White Protestants are there historically that are not British, German, Dutch or Northern European? (Huguenots? Hussites? Valdesi? Sobozinians?)

Excuse my ignorance and preliminary knowledge on the subject, but I was under the impression that the Anglos were from England and the Saxons were from Germany, giving rise to the definition I used.  As for your second point, I agree.  I was just saying I'd usually heard it used that way.  Honestly, without trying to veer off subject or getting to tender subjects, I kind of always associated it with ethnicities of people that the Nazis would have gone all googly-eyes over.
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politicus
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« Reply #48 on: September 05, 2014, 12:15:47 PM »

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Mechaman
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« Reply #49 on: September 05, 2014, 12:21:26 PM »

If you want to get indepth with it:

Dictionary DefinitionTM: A person with a white skin hue who has ancestry going back to the Anglo and Saxon tribes that settled in Central and Northern Europe sometime in the first millenia AD who subscribes to some form of Protestant religion.

The "How it is actually used" Definition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG3PnQ3tgzY
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