White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

WASP [ wɒsp ] is an acronym for White Anglo - Saxon Protestant ( German for " white Anglo-Saxon Protestant" ), which refers to a people in the U.S. with just these features: white skin, Protestant faith and English descent.

It is a usually derogatory term used to designate an ethnic group or culture, the customs and the heritage of the founding years of the United States.

The term limits the early colonizers with their disproportionate influence within the U.S. elites on later European immigrants (eg, German, Irish, Italian, Polish ) or non-European origin.

For the first time the concept of Irish Catholics against English Protestants ( Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Reformed ) was used. In the 19th and the first half of the 20th century was an unspoken hierarchy among immigrants and their descendants:

• At the top were the WASPs, so the Protestant English and Scots,
• Then followed the mostly Protestant Germans and Scandinavians also,
• Then the mostly Catholic Irish and non - Anglo-Saxons ( Poles, Italians ) and
• On the lowest level, the African-Americans.

Generally Edward Digby Baltzell is with his 1964 book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America regarded as the creator of the term. Baltzell originally meant a small upper class; later authors have greatly expanded the concept to some extent and used it on all sections of the population coming from the UK or Ireland (including the Scots and Welsh) and append a Protestant denomination, including the Presbyterians and Episcopalians ( Anglicans ).

Protestants of British descent who belong to the lower class (see white trash ) are not referred to as WASPs.

For a long time, that the political elite was recruited from the ranks of the WASP.