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Let's Level The Playing Field For Disadvantaged WASPs

Back in the not-too-distant days when WASPs still ruled the world, all you needed to prosper were a firm handshake, a square-jawed solidity of character (or at least a gift for conveying the illusion of solidity), a passing acquaintance with etiquette and a fervent belief in the efficacy of hard work. Of course, desirable family bloodlines and the right schools didn't hurt, but any stout-hearted fellow from the wrong side of the tracks could redeem himself through vision and diligence and good posture. Years of sweat assuredly paid off in years of reward. You simply had to persevere and be a WASP, and eventually you'd stroll down tree-shaded boulevards with your fashionable wife, basking in the cordial nods of your honorable neighbors, blissfully assured that you ranked among the blessed. 

It was a charmed life for those of Anglo-Saxon extraction. A hundred years ago they dominated the upper echelons of American industry, the literary and artistic establishments, the realms of science and academe, the social pages of the local newspaper, even the gaudy netherworld of the theater. To graduate from Harvard, Yale or Princeton was to revel in the clubby privileges of upper-class WASPdom for the remainder of your life. When you modestly informed acquaintances that you went to college 'at New Haven,' everyone knew what you meant; you didn't have to utter the magical four-letter word.

Today, like bluebirds or puffins, the upper-class American Anglo-Saxon has been marginalized and almost endangered; the breed has been reduced to isolated pockets in places like western Connecticut and Philadelphia's Main Line, with summering colonies on Nantucket and the coast of Maine. The Jewish Renaissance of the twentieth century -- for that is surely what future historians without blinders will call it -- changed forever the ethnography of academia, the arts and the professions (though, somewhat sadly, not the government or the corporate world). In an explosion of creativity and chutzpah, it even created a megalithic new establishment that effectively shunted WASPs to the sidelines; today we call that establishment the entertainment industry. 

Though the upscale Anglo-Saxon retained a phantom wisp of social prestige as late as the 1960s (when they still impressed us with their fine-boned looks and Brooks Brothers suits), today we draw most of our social cues from the ghettos and the comedy clubs. Irony and edginess have replaced the square jaw and the firm handshake in the constellation of virtues.

If the twentieth century was a Jewish Renaissance, the twenty-first promises to be an Asiatic one. The ranks of the top American colleges and universities are filling up with academically gifted students of East Asian parentage, just as bright Jewish students vaulted to the upper slopes of academia in the last century. At Berkeley the student population was recently calculated to be more than fifty percent Asian, a stunning achievement in the space of a single generation -- but also another blow to the old WASP legacy. 

Let's face it: to be a WASP today is to be seriously disadvantaged: you belong to a group that can't win heavyweight fights OR compete academically with those highly motivated Asian kids. Everyone mocks your squareness and your inability to boogie. Academically inclined minorities and affirmative action minorities are squeezing you from both ends. Before long the only avenues of opportunity for upscale Anglo-Saxon kids will be modeling for J. Crew or entering the Protestant ministry. Something must be done soon. We can't allow the bloodlines of the Founding Fathers to languish in some kind of perpetual eclipse, can we? 

Allow me to make a modest proposal that might level the playing field. I'm addressing this plan particularly to Asian-American parents in the hope that they might see its wisdom and tactfully diminish their own progeny's insatiable appetite for excellence. I would ask them to do it out of consideration for their disadvantaged WASP neighbors. Parents of the academically gifted, I say to you: teach your children to bowl. Let them spend long afternoons at the lanes in winter; and in the summer encourage them to hunt and fish in the company of semiliterate cronies who subsist on beef jerky. Let them quaff golden beer and grow hefty around the middle. Let them tattoo their bodies and sprout multiple rings upon their faces and torsos. While they attend high school, let them pass idle evening hours at the mall, for the mall is the temple of American life. Encourage them to purchase the latest recordings of the reigning rap stars, so they might cultivate a visceral appreciation of the rhythmic and the profane. Suffer them to attend the local community college, but if they insist on a four-year school, kindly lead them to a branch campus of the state university. At college, let them pledge fraternities and sororities, for it is natural that a student should drink until he vomits. Let your child major in Italian literature or animal husbandry, for such studies will lead the mind away from high technology and other remunerative pursuits. Do all these things and you will help restore true democracy in our great republic, so that even the children of WASPs may compete fairly and attain the American Dream once again. Thank you.

Cynic's Pick of the Week
A New Jersey woman left a cherry Pop-Tart in the toaster, forgot about it, and drove her kids to preschool. When she returned, firefighters were putting out a blaze and smoke was billowing out the windows. Now she and her husband are suing Kellogg's, maker of the flammable Pop-Tart, and Black & Decker, maker of the toaster, for $100,000 in damages. I'd say the fault lieth not in the Pop-Tart but in themselves. But, of course, that never stopped anyone from suing.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," currently lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online. 

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