White Male Protestants built the USA?

[mindlight]

Historically speaking white male protestants (WMP) built America. Catholic Hispanics, foreign powers, and pagan native Americans were just the guys in the way of the expansion and development of the continental USA stretching from sea to shining sea. Black people were brought in to do the grunt work but were organized by the WMPs. Even the official end of slavery after the Civil War did not end this arrangement as WMPs stayed in charge. The first Catholic president did not happen until the sixties and he was murdered. The second Joe Biden is similarly loathed by WMPs as was the first black president - Obama - both were perceived by WMPs as symptoms of American decline. There has never been a female president in the USA. With Trump, the WMPs feel like they are back in charge after the drift of recent decades.

1) Is this a fair description of the political history of the USA?

2) Is a more equitable vision where Hispanics, Women, Blacks, and Catholics share in the success, wealth, and power of the USA desirable?

3) Which is the greater threat to WMP power:
a) The restoration of social mobility and the American dream to give everyone a chance
OR
b) The concentration of power and wealth in the hands of 1 percenters who are often atheists, or liberals rather than WMPs

4) How can hope be restored to every American that they can somehow make it without borrowing beyond their means? What are the major barriers to that happening?

 

[FAITH-IN-HIM]

Is this thread genuine?

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Historically speaking white male protestants (WMP) built America. Catholic Hispanics, foreign powers, and pagan native Americans were just the guys in the way of the expansion and development of the continental USA stretching from sea to shining sea. Black people were brought in to do the grunt work but were organized by the WMPs. Even the official end of slavery after the Civil War did not end this arrangement as WMPs stayed in charge. The first Catholic president did not happen until the sixties and he was murdered. The second Joe Biden is similarly loathed by WMPs as was the first black president - Obama - both were perceived by WMPs as symptoms of American decline. There has never been a female president in the USA. With Trump, the WMPs feel like they are back in charge after the drift of recent decades.

1) Is this a fair description of the political history of the USA?

2) Is a more equitable vision where Hispanics, Women, Blacks, and Catholics share in the success, wealth, and power of the USA desirable?

3) Which is the greater threat to WMP power:
a) The restoration of social mobility and the American dream to give everyone a chance
OR
b) The concentration of power and wealth in the hands of 1 percenters who are often atheists, or liberals rather than WMPs

4) How can hope be restored to every American that they can somehow make it without borrowing beyond their means? What are the major barriers to that happening?

Who is the author of the description?

 

[mindlight]

Who is the author of the description?

American history and the apparent ideological conviction of WMPs are the authors of the description. But as with all national myths, the extent to which it corresponds with actual history is what the OP is about. If you object say why a blanket - not true is not helpful to anyone.

 

[bèlla]

I would be curious to know the author and see the source. Do you have an article to share or is this your opinion?

~bella

 

[mindlight]

Is this thread genuine?

It is a genuine set of questions. The portrayal of American history in these simplistic and racist terms is something that probably should be disputed.

 

[mindlight]

I would be curious to know the author and see the source. Do you have an article to share or is this your opinion?

~bella

E. Digby Baltzell popularised the term White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in a book in 1964. Edward Blum and Paul Harvey both did extensive work on the intersection of race, religion, and whiteness in America. I have narrowed the WASP focus by gender to being men in charge but these are not new ideas and I doubt Baltzell would have disagreed with the notion that WASPs were mainly male-dominated.

 

[BCP1928]

American history and the apparent ideological conviction of WMPs are the authors of the description. But as with all national myths, the extent to which it corresponds with actual history is what the OP is about. If you object say why a blanket - not true is not helpful to anyone.

I thought you were just trying to Poe Hillsdale college.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

1) Is this a fair description of the political history of the USA?

You'd have to specify what you mean by "Built the USA"

In terms of the founding/ideas that laid the framework for the USA, I don't think it's any secret a decent sized chunk of the founding fathers were White Male Protestants. (Though there were a percentage who were what was called "Deists")

In terms of the "building" as in "physically doing the labor", obviously there were other groups that did a lot of that.


It's idea/vision vs. execution dynamic.

For example:
Let's use the company Apple as an example...

Without the developers and "techy people" of the era grinding away, the ideas of Steve Jobs wouldn't have come to fruition
Flipside
Without Steve Jobs' ideas, those tech savants wouldn't have had any sort of clear vision of what to work on

2) Is a more equitable vision where Hispanics, Women, Blacks, and Catholics share in the success, wealth, and power of the USA desirable?

"Equitable" (in terms of the modern themes of equity) -- sure

"Fair" -- it would probably depend on the aspect.


To provide an example
So if we look at the major accomplishment that was the perfecting of the modern assembly line for mass production...

Henry Ford and his team were all men
The workforce of 13,000 people (in total) had fewer than 50 women working there (typically in clerical roles)

So if someone tried to shoehorn in some reason why "Women were just as instrumental to Ford's success as men" to serve a narrative, that would tend to fit in with the modern definition of "equity". However, it wouldn't be accurate or fair.



However, if you juxtapose that against, say, NASAs major accomplishment of the Apollo Moon landing project...

The MIT instrumentation team that created the software for it was hugely vital to the project, and was led by a woman (Margaret Hamilton), and that team she led was comprised of 4 other women, and 3 men.


In that scenario, history putting all of the focus and glory only on the men that were involved with the Apollo project (the astronauts themselves, and which ever government department heads signed the checks) would be a legitimate unfairness that would be worthy of correction.

3) Which is the greater threat to WMP power:
a) The restoration of social mobility and the American dream to give everyone a chance
OR
b) The concentration of power and wealth in the hands of 1 percenters who are often atheists, or liberals rather than WMPs

I would question how much WMP power still exists...


If we look at education:

Degree Type​	Men​	Women​
High School Diploma/GED​	30.1% (as highest attainment)​	27.0% (as highest attainment)​
Bachelor’s Degree or Higher​	36.2%​	39.0%​
Master’s Degree​	10,156,000​	13,725,000​
Professional Degree (e.g., Law, Medicine)​	1,869,000​	1,584,000​
Doctoral Degree​	2,644,000​	2,203,000​

(women are beating men in that category)

If we look at the same data by religious affiliation:

Religious Group​	Less than High School (%)​	High School Diploma (%)​	Some College (%)​	Bachelor’s Degree or Higher (%)​
Hindu​	2​	10​	11​	77​
Jewish​	3​	16​	22​	59​
Buddhist​	2​	18​	33​	47​
Muslim​	6​	30​	25​	39​
Catholic​	16​	31​	27​	26​
Protestant (all groups combined)​	10​	36​	33​	21​
Atheist​	4​	22​	31​	43​
Agnostic​	1​	21​	36​	42​
Nothing in particular​	10​	34​	32​	24​
All U.S. Adults​	16​	31​	32​	27​

(protestants are literally at the bottom in terms of Bachelor degree attainment)


Income by religious affiliation:

Religious Group	≥ $50K	≥ $100K
Jewish	70%	44%
Hindu	68%	36%
Episcopalian/Anglican	68%	35%
Presbyterian (Mainline)	66%	31%
Unitarian Universalist	63%	30%
Buddhist	61%	27%
Catholic	57%	26%
Muslim	52%	19%
Orthodox Christian	51%	20%
Jehovah’s Witness	50%	20%
Protestant (all groups combined)	50%	20%

Protestants are bringing up the rear on that one


If we look at certain major cultural institutions (academia, entertainment), I don't think much of it (if any) is actively conveying a "pro Male Protestant bias" by any measurement -- in fact, "While" "Male" "Protestant" are probably 3 of the most criticized traits in in the past 10 years.


I would say if that if there's anything that's a "threat to While male protestants" (admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of the way that's worded), it's the overarching narratives that everyone who is all 3 of those things has a duty to self-flagellate and atone for the cultural sins of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

4) How can hope be restored to every American that they can somehow make it without borrowing beyond their means? What are the major barriers to that happening?

Two things would go a long way in that regard

1) Embrace the trades

2) Remove the college requirements for the litany of non-trades fields that don't actually have a practical need for it, and are just arbitrarily requiring a bachelor's degree, and replace with it much less expensive 12-18 month vocational training.

Netherlands has been moving toward this model, and Switzerland (one of the more affluent countries on the planet) has embraced this model for a while, with over 70% of their younger people opting this more slimmed down (and less expensive) targeted vocational training over the traditional university model.

Obviously certain fields (like medicine, law, and a few select others) have a legitimate need for a more advanced education and more schooling, but that's certainly not true of all fields currently requiring it in the US.

 

[mindlight]

I thought you were just trying to Poe Hillsdale college.

Poe Hillsdale College has been criticized for a conservative view of American history that glossed over the more unpleasant aspects of it. I understand that Americans do not necessarily think historically in the way that British people do for example. But in my description, I am trying to portray an understanding of the white man's anger that has propelled movements like Trumpism. For centuries these guys have in their perception been in charge and done a pretty good job in making America the superpower that it is today. To an extent this is true, and yet there are serious questions that can be posed against that view also. The civil rights movement and gender quotas, critical race theory have all suggested an alternative perspective of that history. The suggestion made in the liberal curriculums that Trump is now busy dismantling was that there were systemic injustices built into American institutions that keep the black man down. So Trumpism is in part a reaction to these historical forces and feelings amongst white males of displacement from previous positions of superiority.

When the Americans declared independence from the British one of the reasons was that the good relations between the British and Indians were designed to limit American expansion. The overthrow of the British was therefore in part about the expansionist vision I have outlined in the OP and it was dominated by White Male protestants then and for most of history since also.

 

[Larniavc]

Historically speaking white male protestants (WMP) built America. Catholic Hispanics, foreign powers, and pagan native Americans were just the guys in the way of the expansion and development of the continental USA stretching from sea to shining sea. Black people were brought in to do the grunt work but were organized by the WMPs. Even the official end of slavery after the Civil War did not end this arrangement as WMPs stayed in charge. The first Catholic president did not happen until the sixties and he was murdered. The second Joe Biden is similarly loathed by WMPs as was the first black president - Obama - both were perceived by WMPs as symptoms of American decline. There has never been a female president in the USA. With Trump, the WMPs feel like they are back in charge after the drift of recent decades.

1) Is this a fair description of the political history of the USA?

2) Is a more equitable vision where Hispanics, Women, Blacks, and Catholics share in the success, wealth, and power of the USA desirable?

3) Which is the greater threat to WMP power:
a) The restoration of social mobility and the American dream to give everyone a chance
OR
b) The concentration of power and wealth in the hands of 1 percenters who are often atheists, or liberals rather than WMPs

4) How can hope be restored to every American that they can somehow make it without borrowing beyond their means? What are the major barriers to that happening?

Not slaves then? Definitely not slaves? I thought it was slaves? I was slaves.

 

[BCP1928]

Poe Hillsdale College has been criticized for a conservative view of American history that glossed over the more unpleasant aspects of it. I understand that Americans do not necessarily think historically in the way that British people do for example. But in my description, I am trying to portray an understanding of the white man's anger that has propelled movements like Trumpism. For centuries these guys have in their perception been in charge and done a pretty good job in making America the superpower that it is today. To an extent this is true, and yet there are serious questions that can be posed against that view also. The civil rights movement and gender quotas, critical race theory have all suggested an alternative perspective of that history. The suggestion made in the liberal curriculums that Trump is now busy dismantling was that there were systemic injustices built into American institutions that keep the black man down. So Trumpism is in part a reaction to these historical forces and feelings amongst white males of displacement from previous positions of superiority.

When the Americans declared independence from the British one of the reasons was that the good relations between the British and Indians were designed to limit American expansion. The overthrow of the British was therefore in part about the expansionist vision I have outlined in the OP and it was dominated by White Male protestants then and for most of history since also.

What it all boils down to is this: If women get to decide for themselves who they go to bed with and when, some men are afraid they won't get any. The women might even decide to give it away to a person of color or a wimp if those usurpers can't be kept in their places.

 

[mindlight]

You'd have to specify what you mean by "Built the USA"

In terms of the founding/ideas that laid the framework for the USA, I don't think it's any secret a decent sized chunk of the founding fathers were White Male Protestants. (Though there were a percentage who were what was called "Deists")

In terms of the "building" as in "physically doing the labor", obviously there were other groups that did a lot of that.


It's idea/vision vs. execution dynamic.

For example:
Let's use the company Apple as an example...

Without the developers and "techy people" of the era grinding away, the ideas of Steve Jobs wouldn't have come to fruition
Flipside
Without Steve Jobs' ideas, those tech savants wouldn't have had any sort of clear vision of what to work on



"Equitable" (in terms of the modern themes of equity) -- sure

"Fair" -- it would probably depend on the aspect.


To provide an example
So if we look at the major accomplishment that was the perfecting of the modern assembly line for mass production...

Henry Ford and his team were all men
The workforce of 13,000 people (in total) had fewer than 50 women working there (typically in clerical roles)

So if someone tried to shoehorn in some reason why "Women were just as instrumental to Ford's success as men" to serve a narrative, that would tend to fit in with the modern definition of "equity". However, it wouldn't be accurate or fair.



However, if you juxtapose that against, say, NASAs major accomplishment of the Apollo Moon landing project...

The MIT instrumentation team that created the software for it was hugely vital to the project, and was led by a woman (Margaret Hamilton), and that team she led was comprised of 4 other women, and 3 men.


In that scenario, history putting all of the focus and glory only on the men that were involved with the Apollo project (the astronauts themselves, and which ever government department heads signed the checks) would be a legitimate unfairness that would be worthy of correction.






If we look at education:

Degree Type​	Men​	Women​
High School Diploma/GED​	30.1% (as highest attainment)​	27.0% (as highest attainment)​
Bachelor’s Degree or Higher​	36.2%​	39.0%​
Master’s Degree​	10,156,000​	13,725,000​
Professional Degree (e.g., Law, Medicine)​	1,869,000​	1,584,000​
Doctoral Degree​	2,644,000​	2,203,000​

(women are beating men in that category)

If we look at the same data by religious affiliation:

Religious Group​	Less than High School (%)​	High School Diploma (%)​	Some College (%)​	Bachelor’s Degree or Higher (%)​
Hindu​	2​	10​	11​	77​
Jewish​	3​	16​	22​	59​
Buddhist​	2​	18​	33​	47​
Muslim​	6​	30​	25​	39​
Catholic​	16​	31​	27​	26​
Protestant (all groups combined)​	10​	36​	33​	21​
Atheist​	4​	22​	31​	43​
Agnostic​	1​	21​	36​	42​
Nothing in particular​	10​	34​	32​	24​
All U.S. Adults​	16​	31​	32​	27​

(protestants are literally at the bottom in terms of Bachelor degree attainment)


Income by religious affiliation:

Religious Group	≥ $50K	≥ $100K
Jewish	70%	44%
Hindu	68%	36%
Episcopalian/Anglican	68%	35%
Presbyterian (Mainline)	66%	31%
Unitarian Universalist	63%	30%
Buddhist	61%	27%
Catholic	57%	26%
Muslim	52%	19%
Orthodox Christian	51%	20%
Jehovah’s Witness	50%	20%
Protestant (all groups combined)	50%	20%

Protestants are bringing up the rear on that one


If we look at certain major cultural institutions (academia, entertainment), I don't think much of it (if any) is actively conveying a "pro Male Protestant bias" by any measurement -- in fact, "While" "Male" "Protestant" are probably 3 of the most criticized traits in in the past 10 years.


I would say if that if there's anything that's a "threat to While male protestants" (admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of the way that's worded), it's the overarching narratives that everyone who is all 3 of those things has a duty to self-flagellate and atone for the cultural sins of their grandparents and great-grandparents.




Two things would go a long way in that regard

1) Embrace the trades

2) Remove the college requirements for the litany of non-trades fields that don't actually have a practical need for it, and are just arbitrarily requiring a bachelor's degree, and replace with it much less expensive 12-18 month vocational training.

Netherlands has been moving toward this model, and Switzerland (one of the more affluent countries on the planet) has embraced this model for a while, with over 70% of their younger people opting this more slimmed down (and less expensive) targeted vocational training over the traditional university model.

Obviously certain fields (like medicine, law, and a few select others) have a legitimate need for a more advanced education and more schooling, but that's certainly not true of all fields currently requiring it in the US.

Deists are a spin-off of White Male Protestantism. There are few if any Catholic Deists in late eighteenth-century history and no female ones that I am aware of.

The Henry Ford male workforce was of course mainly married men supported by women in their domestic lives. That separation of gender roles has been a casualty of world wars and the civil rights movement, especially since the sixties.

Indentured white workers fresh off the boats were just as beholden to the Business owners who created and ran the early American economy, later Robber Barons, and now the One percenters serve a similar role. This division between the people who sweat it and the people who get the glory and rewards for it has always been there in the US marketplace as has an exaggeration of the benefits due to the founder over his workers (by comparison to other developed economies). But a big difference is that indentured workers could get free grants of land and make something of themselves in those peak years of expansion after they had paid off their passage to the New World. Now that hope of something more seems more closed off - there is no social mobility. If the rich screw up they do not fall from grace and if the poor work hard they do not advance to a higher position. Being born rich makes you rich, being born poor makes you poor and the middle class is being squeezed and is heavily indebted as they ape lifestyles they cannot afford modeled by 1 percenters.

All the stats you use are post-sixties and so fit the thesis suggested here rather than overthrow it. America was never built by academics and indeed there was a strong tradition of anti-intellectualism in WMP ideology. IT has been a booming industry for the last twenty years and that distorts the historical focus as they have focused on the mastery of digital information in brain-intensive, abstract, and often academic ways that were not typical or central to the industrialization experience of many American businesses before the sixties. Today White Protestant males are being squeezed, academia is biased against them and their contribution to American history is forgotten by all except themselves. They see things going to the dogs and rationalizations about that are not going to make that anger go away.

I completely agree about the apprenticeship idea which works very well here in Germany for example.

 

[mindlight]

Not slaves then? Definitely not slaves? I thought it was slaves? I was slaves.

What is the difference between a black slave who is fed and clothed and housed but paid nothing and a low-paid black worker who can barely achieve the same lifestyle quality? The point here is more about the organization of society by White Male Protestants than the black experience of the indignity of slavery. The fact is that many WMPs only supported the abolition of slavery because it reduced their costs and made for a more flexible workforce that mainly managed most of their nonbusiness expenses. They were also more motivated and if educated more productive also. But the fundamental relationship of white to black power did not begin to change until the 1960s

 

[Larniavc]

What is the difference between a black slave who is fed and clothed and housed but paid nothing and a low-paid black worker who can barely achieve the same lifestyle quality?

One is property and one is not. I'm saddened that this needs to be explained to an adult.

 

[essentialsaltes]

1) Is this a fair description of the political history of the USA?

Not very.

...liberals rather than WMPs

What prevents WMPs from being liberal?

 

[mindlight]

What it all boils down to is this: If women get to decide for themselves who they go to bed with and when, some men are afraid they won't get any. The women might even decide to give it away to a person of color or a wimp if those usurpers can't be kept in their places.

Yes and the KKK can no longer enforce those rules or terrorise potential bed partners to their women with burning crosses. Not sure the breakdown of the family is a healthy thing and there are Western countries where the divorce rates are far lower than in the USA and the abortion rates are also lower. So maybe this is a question of how liberation has been managed in the USA rather than just one of the fact of liberation and the possibility of mixed race relationships. The redefinition of femininity in terms of the power to kill your child rather than birth it seems a negative trend.

 

[mindlight]

Not very.


What prevents WMPs from being liberal?

Unhelpful answer and historically WMPs have not been that liberal. To some extent the definition of the turning point dates to the development of democracy first for men and then the abolition of slavery and also for women getting the votes. Many Americans supported these liberalizations but they did not impact WMP dominance until the 1960s. The anger of WMPs who voted for Trump contrasts with white men of various religions or no religion who have embraced these changes or indeed benefitted from them. American partisanship does have a gender pattern to it overall with men more likely to be on the right and women on the left. More religious people are on the right and less religious on the left.

 

[mindlight]

One is property and one is not. I'm saddened that this needs to be explained to an adult.

I am not a fan of slavery but a man can be free and dirt poor or rich and a slave. Regardless of whether slave or free my religion teaches me that both have equal dignity in the eyes of God (Philemon). The OP is about WMP dominance, displacement, and feelings of injured dignity. The ending of black slavery did not make much difference to the relative economic status of black people until the sixties is the main point here. For most not being property just meant extra costs and few extra benefits beyond the status of being free. So the white man still felt superior even after the abolition of slavery and indeed racist policies like immigration filters on Ellis Island remained in force long after the abolition of slavery. Even today black immigration to the USA lags behind white immigration relative to the size of the black population as a proportion of the whole.

 

[BCP1928]

Deists are a spin-off of White Male Protestantism. There are few if any Catholic Deists in late eighteenth-century history and no female ones that I am aware of.

The Henry Ford male workforce was of course mainly married men supported by women in their domestic lives. That separation of gender roles has been a casualty of world wars and the civil rights movement, especially since the sixties.

Indentured white workers fresh off the boats were just as beholden to the Business owners who created and ran the early American economy, later Robber Barons, and now the One percenters serve a similar role. This division between the people who sweat it and the people who get the glory and rewards for it has always been there in the US marketplace as has an exaggeration of the benefits due to the founder over his workers (by comparison to other developed economies). But a big difference is that indentured workers could get free grants of land and make something of themselves in those peak years of expansion after they had paid off their passage to the New World. Now that hope of something more seems more closed off - there is no social mobility. If the rich screw up they do not fall from grace and if the poor work hard they do not advance to a higher position. Being born rich makes you rich, being born poor makes you poor and the middle class is being squeezed and is heavily indebted as they ape lifestyles they cannot afford modeled by 1 percenters.

All the stats you use are post-sixties and so fit the thesis suggested here rather than overthrow it. America was never built by academics and indeed there was a strong tradition of anti-intellectualism in WMP ideology. IT has been a booming industry for the last twenty years and that distorts the historical focus as they have focused on the mastery of digital information in brain-intensive, abstract, and often academic ways that were not typical or central to the industrialization experience of many American businesses before the sixties. Today White Protestant males are being squeezed, academia is biased against them and their contribution to American history is forgotten by all except themselves. They see things going to the dogs and rationalizations about that are not going to make that anger go away.

And in the meantime their "contribution to American history" is being exaggerated and idealized. They could, of course, learn different ways of being men.