Outside a few holiday resorts, authentic WASPs have mostly disappeared from view. Since
Gilligan's Island introduced Thurston Howell III, most Americans know them only as comic figures in brightly colored holiday attire.
In his perceptive new book,
WASPS: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy, Michael Knox Beran shows that this caricature is deceiving. The WASPs' legacy is still with us even though their accents and rituals have become punchlines. They may have lost much of their privilege and cohesion, but their creations — including the administrative state, elite education, and charitable foundations — remain dominant influences on American life.
The term WASP was never quite accurate. This strand of the American elite was uniformly white, but not Anglo; Dutch, French, and sometimes more exotic blood flowed through its veins. Its members were mostly Protestants, but some were not. And the vast majority of American Protestants did not belong to the Episcopalian churches WASPs favored.