Talk:White Anglo-Saxon Protestants/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Semi-protected edit request on 20 June 2020

In Season 4 of the show 13 Reasons Why from Netflix, two characters (Winston and Charlie) refer to themselves as WASPs, and the irony that brings into their lives. Having just learned of the term from this show and discovered this term/entry, I thought it'd be appropriate to include a reference under the Satire section, or in a new Entertainment section. I will include a reference to the episode where each character alludes to the term. NobleSoul27 (talk) 23:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. However, even with that, it would ideally require a reference to an independent reliable source which describes how this is a significant example: the "WASP" terminology has surely been used in a lot of places and we shouldn't be mentioning every trivial appearance. ​ RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:32, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Social Register

"In the heyday of WASP dominance, the Social Register delineated high society. Its day has passed." What the heck is that last sentence? It does not read like an encyclopedia but rather an opinion piece. I would remove that last sentence but this article is locked. If a seasoned editor could please remove that sentence or rephrase it in a way that doesn't read like young adult fiction. What an embarrassment... Thank you. 68.6.171.173 (talk) 20:15, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for your input. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:30, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 March 2020

Please add hatnote: {{redirect|WASP|the U.S. WWII women pilots' organization|Women Airforce Service Pilots|other uses|Wasp (disambiguation)}} 47.146.63.87 (talk) 07:14, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

 Partly done. There's no need to single out a specific alternate usage, but I added the hatnote that points to the disambiguation page. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:16, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Based on pure anecdote I think that's the next-most-frequent usage of the acronym, but yeah whatever. Is there an easy way to get some data on that? Page hits maybe? --47.146.63.87 (talk) 17:40, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

See [1]. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 08:22, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Marian Anderson

In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied prominent black singer Marian Anderson permission to sing in Constitution Hall. In the ensuing furor, the president's wife Eleanor Roosevelt publicly resigned from the DAR and arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000.

It's not clear what this has to do with WASPs, so I've removed it from the article. I guess we can assume that many DAR members, and Roosevelt, were WASPs (and that Anderson wasn't), but that doesn't necessarily mean every noteworthy event that involved them is pertinent here. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:19, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

agree on removal. DAR was indeed WASP. Byt FDR was not--Teddy Roosevelt in 1899 explained to Finley Peter Dunne why the Roosevelts were Dutch and not Anglo Saxons. see https://books.google.com/books?id=6WoTCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=Finley+Peter+Dunne%5D%5D+1899+Roosevelts+Dutch&source=bl&ots=H-OCIYkW5z&sig=ACfU3U0tffbMeuEs4bNqEgRRxP5WAL-r9Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjrzPb3kbDqAhX0JTQIHWWmDhMQ6AEwAXoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=Finley%20Peter%20Dunne%5D%5D%201899%20Roosevelts%20Dutch&f=false Rjensen (talk) 03:29, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Education

In the section on education, it should be noted that the Protestant dominance of elite universities has utterly eroded in recent decades, to the extent that you would think the Catholics committed mass genocide on Ivy League campuses. Yale published statistics on the religious affiliations of its incoming freshmen for the past century, showing Episcopalians moving from a solid plurality to just 4.6% of students, while Catholics ballooned from single digit percentages to over 26%, now the single largest religious group at Yale. As a matter of fact, even if you combine all of the Protestant groups into one unified demographic (which is nonsensical in any event), they still wouldn't outnumber Catholics. Similar statistics have been published by Harvard and the other Ivies, all showing Protestants underrepresented.

That probably has something to do with the fact that all but 2 Supreme Court Justices are now Catholic -- one is a Jew, and the other was raised Catholic but converted to a mainline Protestant church. I also read that something like 50% or more of corporate lawyers are Catholic. And, looking at the demographic stats for various Northeast suburbs, it appears as if traditional "WASP" neighborhoods are now plurality or majority Catholic (see, for example, the stats on Greenwich, CT, which has a 44% Catholic plurality and just 9% mainline Protestant - I am sure 50 years ago it was reversed.)

Unfortunately, I can't find any reliable sources that detail in any specifics the socioeconomic ascendancy of American Catholics. Whenever I search this topic I keep getting hits to research and websites having to do with 19th Century anti-Catholic bigotry, which suggests to me that most of the people interested in this subject, laymen and scholars alike, enjoy wallowing in the past more than acknowledging the profound demographic changes that have occurred in recent decades.

And finally, who are these Episcopalians who rate so high in income and education levels? Unfortunately very few demographers consider different ethnic and racial religious groups when they track income, and instead prefer tracking education and wealth levels by religious affiliation alone, or by racial and/or ethnic affiliation alone. Only once has Pew Research considered ethno-racial identities, religious identities, and income simultaneously, and their chart, which was suspiciously removed from their website, can be found midway on this page. It shows Asian mainline Protestants, Asian Catholics, and white Catholics all with more members in the upper-middle class (or higher) than white mainline Protestants.

So who are these Episcopalians referenced in this article? Are they white, "old stock" Episcopalians like this article implies? Or are they more like Asian converts and non-WASP converts to the Episcopal Church?Jonathan f1 (talk) 01:44, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Sources

If you have actual changes to propose or reliable sources which can be integrated into the article, please let us know. However, this just sounds like some kind of sweeping conspiracy theory about Catholic control of the legal system and it is not helpful. ‡ Єl Cid of Valencia ^talk 12:53, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Earliest Use of the Term "WASP"

This article's statement about the first published use of the term "WASP" in 1957 is erroneous. A number of pre-1957 occurrences of the term are easily findable, beginning with Stetson Kennedy using it in the New York Amsterdam News in 1948. -- Fred Shapiro, Editor, Yale Book of Quotations — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.7.158 (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

 Fixed. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 12:14, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Slur?

@Timeroot: A handful of opinions that the term is an ethnic slur don't support generalizations like "In some contexts (primarily American) it is considered a slur ... due to associations with white nationalism". From what I can see of the sources, that is both improper synthesis, since the sources that call it a slur don't mention white nationalism – the BBC source argues that the term symbolizes something like white pride and exclusion of minorities, not anything derogatory towards whites – and undue weight to these opinions in the absence of any evaluation and analysis by higher-level sources. The phrase "in some contexts" makes the idea sound more weighty than it really is. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:22, 3 February 2021 (UTC) (edited 03:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC))

the term WASP is now used humorously to poke fun at an old ruling class, but I don't think it is a slur and white nationalism is not involved. The cites given are to a different and much older term "Anglo Saxon" Rjensen (talk) 02:38, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Sangdeboeuf:, you make good points and I realize now I was engaging in improper synthesis, thanks for calling me out. The BBC source does say:

This latter-day Anglo-Saxon commonwealth would come to be summed up in the acronym WASP – White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant – a code for racial purity that white supremacists and neo-Nazis have embraced.

That much, at least, seems to deserve a mention, but I'm not sure where to place it. Rjensen, I'm not sure why you say that the sources only discuss "Anglo-Saxon" and not WASP; maybe you missed the mention of WASP in the BBC article? Maybe the answer would be to move this stuff out of the lead and make a new subsection -- I'm not sure what it call it, "Criticism"? -- that mentions that the term is off-color in some contexts and has been appropriated by neo-Nazis. With some appropriate language to make clear this is a minority use. I don't want to give undue weight, but when it's a matter of "80% of people think this term is fine and 20% associate this term with Nazism", I think it makes sense to mention the minority viewpoint as a sort of warning. Sort of like the discussion in Tar-Baby#Racist_interpretation. Timeroot (talk) 07:06, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The problem comes from one lonely sentence: " This latter-day Anglo-Saxon commonwealth would come to be summed up in the acronym WASP – White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant – a code for racial purity that white supremacists and neo-Nazis have embraced. " by Wood. No cites, no scholarship mentioned. He missed this Wikipedia article. See Michael Wood's wikipedia page. He has written dozens of TV shows and spinoff books covering a lot of English and Ancient history and even India and China, but never the USA. So I don't think he thought about that tossoff sentence. We should not use one sentence in an unsourced popular essay as counterbalancing the many reliable sources this article cites. White supremacy is a nasty thing and it is major issue in USA today. To my knowledge no scholar or reliable American source has ever linked WASP to "white supremacists and neo-Nazis". For some fresh evidence take a look look at how white nationalists think about WASPs. Read (1) page 116 and (2) p. 186 Rjensen (talk) 08:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

It's true that the article could use a section for usage, interpretation, etc. (not just "criticism"). Maybe § Naming could be expanded and re-formatted along those lines. One problem is that the lead section introduces the topic as a term, while the body deals more with the actual group the term is meant to represent, resulting in an unbalanced lead. In general, important clams require more than just a passing mention in a non-academic source, as Rjensen said. Do we actually know what percentage of people actually "associate this term with Nazism"? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 10:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Writing Errors

I cannot edit this page as it is protected but the following sentence is non-sensical: Prior to the late 20th century, all U.S. Supreme Court justices were of WASP or Protestant Germanic heritage (with the exceptions of Jewish-American Louis Brandeis, appointed in 1916, Benjamin N. Cardozo, of Iberian Jewish descent, appointed in 1932,[71] and Catholic justices Roger B. Taney, Edward Douglass White, Pierce Butler, Joseph McKenna, Frank Murphy, Sherman Minton, and William J. Brennan).

That is decidedly not even close to "all" US Supreme Court Justices. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6080:6502:e111:e84a:ae46:f4fd:222f (talk) 12:54, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

The challenged sentence says that before the late 20th century all but 9 justices were WASPs or Protestants. I don't understand what you find objectionable. Are you reading the exceptions as the "all"? Dhtwiki (talk) 13:26, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion on whether "WASP" definition is pseudoscientific and racist

This article is so racist that it's verging pseudoscience, particularly this passage in the lead: "The group [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants] has long dominated American society, culture, and the leadership of major political parties, and had a monopoly on elite society due to intermarriage and nepotism." The mention of intermarriage is faulty, since the group is so large that marriage between its members is not only inevitable, but also not classifiable as "intermarriage" (implying consanguinity) due to the cultural and genetic differences inherent to such a large population. Acronyms similar to "WASP" could be made up out-of-nothing for virtually every country on Earth, e.g.: the East-Asian Han Buddhists (EAHB) in China, the Black Mandé Islamists (BMI) in Mali, the Mestizo Latino Catholics (MLC) in many Latin American countries, the White Slavic Orthodox-Christians (WSOC) in Russia and other Eastern European countries, etc. This analog classifications do not exist due to its obvious stereotyping and bulk arrangement of very large and fuzzy collectives. Particularly fallacious is the equivalence of race or ethnicity (white) with culture (Anglo-Saxon) and religion (Protestantism) — (would be the Founding Fathers of the United States considered "WASPs," despite Benjamin Franklin and others reportedly being agnostic?). I suggest to make explicit in the lead that this is a concept invented by Eric Kaufmann, and not presenting it as its validity was for granted — given its evident scientific flaws. Ajñavidya (talk) 09:14, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ajñavidya: Kaufman must have been a child prodigy. He was born in 1970 and this 1972 book mentions the concept.[2]

Also "Jewish Affairs - Volume 27 - Page 24 books.google.co.uk › books This is the WASP Father ("White Anglo-Saxon ... He knows that in our society a man must identify with some religion, and so he acknowledges his Judaism — but it has got to be simon-pure American. He will not permit the stigma of foreignness ... Europe, and he would not be caught reading a 2 I Jewish Afiairs - March, 1972." [3]

This 1960 source.[4] Life Magazine 1972.[5]

09:47, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ajñavidya: if you read the article, you will also see this quote by Andrew Hacker, published in December 1957: "These 'old' Americans possess, for the most part, some common characteristics. First of all, they are 'WASPs'—in the cocktail party jargon of the sociologists. That is, they are wealthy, they are Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are Protestants (and disproportionately Episcopalian) ." Are all these sources made up then? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 18:52, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sangdeboeuf:I'm not against quoting the content, I'm just asking for some passages in the article to be attributed since its questionable scientific content. For example, take this passage in the lead: «WASP elites have long dominated American society, culture, and politics, maintaining a monopoly through intermarriage. inheritance, and nepotism». What monopoly? How can a human population comprising millions of individuals «maintain a monopoly» through intermarriage? Whatever «monopoly» or cultural domain in the American society is because people described by the bulk of traits of the WASP label are majority in the United States. The article is doubtlessly racist since it mixtures cultures, skin-color, religion and whatnot. If this was done with any other ethnic group in the world it would lift eyebrows, and for justified reason. Ajñavidya (talk) 07:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

don't misread the article. It's mostly about a small minority of elite people (thousands not millions)....it's about those folks listed in the Social register. --or Ivy League graduates before 1945. try looking at the items cited. Rjensen (talk) 08:53, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

It isn't about a minority of elite people. Protestant, white and Anglo-Saxon are traits that are common to the majority of the population in the United States. Every country has a majority with common traits, it's a logical phenomenon (as I have argued before); but only in this case they have dedicated such a weird and unscientific article, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but it should be attributed. Ajñavidya (talk) 02:11, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

You need to read the reliable sources. WASP is a term used to refer to a specialized small elite. (And your assumption is false--Anglo-Saxons make up a minority of the US population--you need to take into account Germans, Scandinavians, Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, blacks, Asians and Hispanics etc). Rjensen (talk) 02:15, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not against including what the source says, I'm just saying it should be attributed to that source given the dubious scientific base as this is a «cocktail party jargon» term, as the article clearly puts it; besides its clear racist criteria and libelous nature (WP:Pseudoscience). By the other hand, all those nationalities you've mentioned (Scandinavians, Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, etc.) are the origin of immigrant populations in the United States, but the culture of the United States is Anglo-Saxon and practically all the people who are born in the country, regardless of their race —be it either white, black or else— are, in fact, Anglo-Saxon. Ajñavidya (talk) 05:17, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Is there a reliable source for this analysis? E. Digby Baltzell wrote about the "White–Anglo-Saxon–Protestant (WASP) upper class" in The Protestant Establishment in 1964; was he "libeling" his own ethnic group?

The "cocktail party jargon" quote is from 1957; and in fact WASP was no longer just cocktail party jargon once that journal article using it was published. I see over 11,000 results on Google Scholar for the term, so it has clearly entered the scholarly lexicon somewhat since then. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 06:17, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

The USA discussed the existence of white privilege, but they did not forget WASPs had the most privilege. In the last 7 decades, more and more non-Anglo white Americans have become more and more upper-middle class, in fact there are terms like WIP-Ps (White Irish or Italian or Polish Protestants) to indicate they're affluent. WASPs tend to include those of Dutch, French, German and Scandinavian ancestry, and white Catholics are mistaken for WASPs if they are of affluent or college-educated backgrounds. 2605:E000:100D:C571:8C36:F847:196F:592 (talk) 03:55, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Are you serious? There is a people in the United States that is White, Anglo-Saxon, and at the same time Protestant you wanting it or not. You can only think that this is racist if you’re racist by yourself. Because absolutely individuals who were White Anglo-Saxons (The predominant British emancipated group at the time of the explorations and colonizations) and at the same time were Protestants (From a Protestant country where you had to be a Protestant to be member of the Parliament), these people had a superior status in early colonial period, in average. So this discussion is absolutely pathetic. How could basic facts like that be racist just by you saying it? What’s wrong with you? What’s next? “Sky is blue... Is that racist?”. We’re not talking about reasons, effects, causes... we’re talking about a simple fact. I’m in shock, if you’re not being sarcastic I’m sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:d55:2a14:262c:d553:e0d6:81e9:642e (talk) 21:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Social Register

The thing is, there are Irish surnames listed in the Social Register. I looked up the lists. I know that it's problematic to use surnames to approximate ancestry, but it still raises some interesting questions. How would you classify someone like Philip Kearny? He checked every WASP box: multigenerational wealth, Ivy League pedigree, Episcopalian, member of the Union Club. But he has Irish ancestry and an Irish surname, and it seems English and Dutch ancestry as well (and possibly French thrown in there). WASP or lace curtain Irish? And what, if anything, was the difference?Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:42, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

The Irish Protestant element in Ireland included people of English descent (included as WASP) and those of Scottish-descent (Scotch Irish), usually included in the WASP element. The Kearneys were probably originalkly English--they came to colonies in 18c and some were Loyalists. Don't mix them up with Irish Catholics (who were not WASP). Rjensen (talk) 00:27, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Criticism

I removed the following from the lead:

After World War II, Americans increasingly criticized the WASP hegemony and disparaged them as the epitome of "the Establishment".

This was not cited to any source, and the rest of the article doesn't mention "criticism" anywhere. Any help finding a source would be appreciated. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:31, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I restored it and cited Irving Lewis Allen "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" Ethnicity (1975) 2#2: 153–162. --see also his book. Rjensen (talk) 00:40, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, could you specify where and how the source supports the text, for those of us who don't have access to it? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 05:08, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

The writings of Louis Auchincloss argue that the WASPs declined because of "a fatal narrowness and flabbiness of character". The same argument is stressed in E. Digby Baltzell. "It is a very common view" says Nelson Aldrich IV, "The upper class, up for grabs," Wilson Quarterly (1993), 18#3 pp 65-72. Rjensen (talk) 18:24, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, are you quoting Allen here, or are these additional citations for the same material? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:10, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I was quoting Aldrich, who has written a book and some articles on the topic. Rjensen (talk) 18:53, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

OK, but where does the cited source (Allen) say anything about "WASP hegemony" or being "the epitome of 'The Establishment'"? That implies the criticism that WASPs had too much power. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:43, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Sociologist John W Dykstra in 1958 described “Mr. Bigot,” a character commonly rebuked in American life who he succinctly defined as the “white AngloSaxon Protestant.” [Kevin M. Schultz, 2010] [Dykstra, John W. "THE PHD FETISH." School and Society 86.2133 (1958): 237-239.] Rjensen Schultz goes on to say that in 2010 WASP is "a much-maligned class identity....Today, it signifies an elitist snoot." Rjensen (talk) 21:47, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Elitism isn't the same as the Establishment, and class identity is not the same as hegemony. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:13, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

a new search reveals lots of articles on "WASP hegemony:--are you arguing that it never existed???

The Late, Great American WASP - WSJhttps://online.wsj.com › article

Dec 23, 2013 — Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP ...

Paul Heise: The fall of the WASP elite has thrown us into ...https://www.pressandjournal.com › stories › paul-heise-...

Sep 25, 2012 — This election is a clear marker of the end of WASP hegemony. No WASPs are on either the Democratic or Republican presidential tickets nor ...

WASPs Were Awesome, WSJ Essay Mythologizes - The Atlantichttps://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2013/12 › wasp...

Dec 21, 2013 — Under WASP hegemony, corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public life. Under WASP ...

What does "WASP hegemony" mean? | History Forumhttps://historum.com › ... › North American History

Nov 21, 2020 — It means domination by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Why Wasps are an endangered species in the US | The ...https://www.independent.co.uk › Voices › Comment

Dec 29, 2013 — And, Epstein goes on, "under Wasp hegemony corruption, scandal and incompetence in high places weren't, as now, regular features of public ... Rjensen (talk) 21:42, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

None of the above supports the statement that Americans increasingly criticized the WASP hegemony. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

White Anglo Saxon Protestants are from more than one class

The current article begins wrong White Anglo Saxon Protestant is an ethnic description not a class description. Most of the Upper Class were White Anglo Saxon Protestants but they were most of every other class too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RichardBond (talk • contribs) 12:31, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is a term applied specifically to the upper class. If there reliable sources that say otherwise, feel free to present them here. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 July 2021

Theories around the self-proclaimed supremacy of the WASP are at the origin of the creation of anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, segregationist and racist movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan in the United States or the Orange Order in Northern Ireland and in Canada. The radical ideology of these WASP movements advocates the supremacy of the white race and develops xenophobic theories. Dayyen (talk) 20:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Term or concept?

@Sangdeboeuf: The article currently reads:

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is a term used in the United States for ...

It is true that "WASP" is a term for a certain category of person, a WASP; just as "banana" is a term for a certain kind of fruit, a banana. The question is whether this article is about the term or about the category, and thus whether WP:REFERS applies.

Most of this article is in fact about the category, not the term. Of course, like many articles, there is a section on the origins and connotations of the term as well. But unlike, say, Swamp Yankee or Redneck or White trash, the term isn't primarily a pejorative or hostile epithet, and the article in fact uses the term repeatedly in Wikipedia's editorial voice as a description. It would be unthinkable to use one of those expressions in Wikipedia's voice to say things like "xxxs tend to concentrate within close proximity of each other".

The word is used descriptively in the titles of books, magazines, and journal articles, both laudatory (The Way of the WASP: How it Made America, and how it Can Save It, So to Speak) and critical (Crashing the Gates: The De-WASPing of America's Power Elite, "The Death of the WASP Elite Is Greatly Exaggerated"); and by political scientists and sociologists (one of whom popularized it). Like many other categories, it is not terribly precise (cf. middle class or elite), but that doesn't make it less of a category.

So, per WP:REFERS, the lead should instead read:

In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs are white American Protestants, generally upper-class and usually of British descent.

Discussion? --Macrakis (talk) 17:05, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

The important thing is how the sources frame WASP, whether as a term or concept. I haven't read all of the sources cited, but Zhang (2015) introduces the topic as "the acronym WASP" before describing the group in sociological terms. If this is representative of other reference works, then I think it's fair to describe WASP as a term and also use it in Wikipedia's voice. The sources may be using the term as a "lens" through which to view the related sociological phenomena. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:31, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

In fact I may have been wrong in moving the page from the singular White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. If the topic is framed as a term then it may be better at the singular title, even if most of the article is not specifically about the term itself. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

WASP is certainly an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but I don't see the relevance of that. NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautic and Space Administration, but the article is about the organization, not about the term. If the group is described in sociological terms, it is talking about the group, not the name.

The plural article title seems reasonable; Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals) mentions "Articles on religious, national, or ethnic groupings of people", and WASP is often considered an ethnicity. So we have Bretons, Irish Americans, etc. Though we also have Brahmin where the article title is in the singular, though it is given a plural verb, and later the article talks of "Brahmins". Similarly, there is an article on Boston Brahmin which then calls them "Boston Brahmins" in the lead (and mentions that they are considered to be White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). --Macrakis (talk) 21:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Once again, the important thing is how published, reliable sources frame the topic. Terms, acronyms, etc. can also be encyclopedic subjects. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:05, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Let's look at some examples from the footnotes of the article:

• Zhang: "From the American Revolution to the 1930s, the WASPs, especially those with a clear ideology of close, upper-class ties, dominated America in all social aspects" -- clearly using WASP substantively, with no scare quotes or other indication that they are talking about the term rather than the concept.
• Allen: title mentions both the concept and the term (as epithet) (I haven't seen the full text)
• Wilton: (I don't have access to this article)
• Kaufmann: uses WASP substantively through the whole article.
• Glassman: Introduces the definition and then uses it substantively in many places ("the general American culture was now WASP"; "...reconceptualizations of WASP culture..."; "...being accepted by WASP America..."; etc etc)
• Champion: uses WASP substantively

Need I go on? --Macrakis (talk) 22:30, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Sources may use the term substantively, but if they also introduce it as a term or acronym, as with Zhang, Glassman, et al., then that seems to be a sign that they are distancing themselves from it somewhat. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree with that reasoning at all. If an article about the agriculture of avocados starts off with "Avocado, like chocolate and cacao, is one of the few English words that comes from Nahuatl" that does not mean that the article is about the word! --Macrakis (talk) 23:13, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

No one said it did. But if it were in an etymological dictionary, then it definitely would. I don't think there's always a sharp distinction between terms and concepts; certain words are used as a "lens" through which related concepts are examined. That may be the case here. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:19, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, if the cited articles were about the etymology or usage of the term "WASP", that would be one thing. But they are not -- except of course for several cited in the "Naming" section. They are about the category, not the name of the category. And the Wikipedia article reflects that clearly, consistently using WASP to talk about a category of person. --Macrakis (talk) 14:40, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

At least three of the chosen sources also discuss WASP as a term. I think that's significant. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Sure, it's perfectly normal to discuss the term as part of the discussion of the topic. And there's no question that "WASP" can be used both as an analytical term and as a loaded epithet. But that's true of many terms, especially about social and ethnic groups. Heck, there's a whole article on Names of the Greeks, but the article on Greeks does not say "Greeks is a term used...", even though many Greeks vociferously prefer the term "Hellene". --Macrakis (talk) 22:40, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

What counts is how sources for this article frame the topic, not how any other article is written. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:18, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say that the Greek situation was the same as the WASP situation. I was just giving an example of another case where there are both terminological issues and substantive issues.

At this point, I don't think we're converging, so it looks like it might be time to ask for a third opinion. --Macrakis (talk) 01:00, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

See the Third Opinion request 03:12, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

Having spent some time looking through this article's references, I'm mildly in favor of changing the lead to talk about the category rather than the term. Clearly the term is somewhat charged, and some authors do feel the need to talk about it explicitly, define it, treat it with some distance, etc.. However, (a) those authors seem to me to to be very much in the minority, especially among the more contemporary sources, and (b) are predominantly writing in academic contexts (e.g. Kaufmann, Zhang) where it's especially important that they define their terms clearly, even terms that are used without much question among the general public. In contrast, there are many articles from the popular press cited (NYT, Time, Chicago Tribune, etc.) that use WASP fearlessly to refer to the category without feeling any need to define it or focus on it as a term at all. Even some academic authors (e.g. Champion) use it in this fashion, and many of the academic authors that do focus on it as a term initially (including Kaufmann and Zhang) often go on to discuss the category primarily rather than restricting their focus to the term overall. Naturally there are some sources that do focus primarily on the term, which justifies the existence of the "Naming" section. That said, WP:REFERS implies to me that if an article is going to introduce its subject as a term as opposed to a category, the focus of the article ought to be on the term itself more-or-less overwhelmingly. That isn't currently the case for this article, and I wouldn't think would be appropriate if it was given the pool of evidence that already exists here. Mesocarp (talk) 14:23, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I will revert the lead to the "category" formulation. --Macrakis (talk) 15:54, 5 September 2021 (UTC)