What is a WASP?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Does it means whites of English ancestry or does it mean elite whites of English ancestry that belong to mainline churches but not fundamentalists?

If we use the former definition, Kentucky, say, would be a lot more "WASP" than Connecticut, but if we use the latter Connecticut would be more "WASP."

It's also interesting how census responses have a regional and class basis to them.  In New England and among the affluent, people are more inclined to declare English ancestry while in the South, they're more likely to say "American."

Scotch-Irish identity seems to be a Southern working class and rural phenomenon.  Though I should add the so-called "Celtic thesis" is garbage.

Whites with roots in New England are more likely to be of English ancestry than whites with roots in the South and Appalachia, whose ancestors more likely came from the southern part of Scotland or from what is now Northern Ireland.

Actually there's also-in addition to the Scottish and Irish Protestant ancestries-a lot of English, Welsh, French Huguenot, and German Palatine in the "Scots-Irish" mix of cultural groups. And that's not even taking into account all of the French, German, Dutch, Czech,  etc. that have all contributed to the South's ancestral makeup. And what of the Native American and black ancestry that many Southern whites likely have?

The issue here, like the OP said, is that Southern whites were (and still are, to some extent) poorer and less educated than Northern whites, generally speaking. Thus, many truly don't know where their ancestors came from; a lot of those ancestors are lost to history. Also, the South didn't receive much immigration from Europe after 1800.

All of these are among the factors (besides excessive nationalistic pride ) for the common Southern/Appalachian, etc. phenomenon of whites putting "American" on the Census.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Speaking of the Scots-Irish, they were also big in Pennsylvania.  And they actually continued to immigrate there after 1800:  Mellon was born in Ulster and in the 1930 census showed the PA had the largest population born in Northern Ireland.

Indeed, PA was one of the top destinations for them.

[All Along The Watchtower]

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.

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.

[All Along The Watchtower]

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.

[All Along The Watchtower]

In the context of 'WASP', though, Anglo Saxon just means English (irrespective of early mediaeval family history) and should be understood simply as the linguistic creation of a society obsessed with the idea of 'race' as a quantifiable scientific category.

Utilizing scientific insight to construct a rationale/justification for power hierarchies in society is a proud tradition in the "Western" world.