Talk:WASP

Hi Richard--your opening just isn't right, not in New York City at any rate. In all the years I lived there I often heard WASPs use the term WASP self-referentially, and I never heard it used or taken as a particular insult--maybe once or twice in that slightly disdainful "reverse discriminatory" manner minority groups can sometimes affect--I went to university with a lot of Jews and I'm thinking maybe used in that manner by some of them on the odd occasion. But, I promise you, any and all of my friends and acquaintances who were in any way "entitled" to describe themselves as "white", "Anglo-saxon" and "protestant", did. I once heard a particularly elegant Episcopalian lady of my acquaintance state that she was not a "WASP", she was actually a "WASAC"--White Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Catholic, and that's the only time I have ever heard the word rejected and it wasn't rejected for any perjorative quality in the user's mind, but simply for the sake of accuracy!

Further, my dictionary (Webster's Collegiate) which I consulted because your words surprised me so, says "sometimes used disparagingly".

I also think your definition of "Yankee" is misleading. No-one outside of the US restricts its use to American New Englanders, it simply means "American". Also, US southerners use it to refer to northerners, period.

Aleta Curry 20:36, 27 November 2007 (CST)

I have to agree with Aleta; I have never heard WASP used in a derrogatory sense.--Robert W King 21:33, 27 November 2007 (CST)

Not that it really adds a whole lot to the conversation, but I've usually (but not always) heard "WASP" used in a slightly negative way. And as a midwesterner, "Yankee" definitely refers to New Englanders. All this really means is that the terms' usages vary depending on context, so I would change "usually" to "often" or "sometimes" but wouldn't spend a ton of time reworking the opening too much. --Joe Quick 22:35, 27 November 2007 (CST)