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We are told that the former elite of the country was nepotistic and elitist against other groups. America's immigration policy seems like it encouraged highly t

We are told that the former elite of the country was nepotistic and elitist against other groups. America's immigration policy seems like it encouraged highly talented people to immigrate. The US has a smaller population than some of the countries a lot of immigrants arrived from. This means that theoretically, there are more talented people overall in the countries with larger populations. So in some sense the US may have imported a new elite making up <1% of jobs. Do you think this new elite in the schools and corporate boardrooms you mentioned is less likely to be nepotistic and elitist towards other ethnic groups as some of the previous elite groups? Why or why not?

rayiner 4y ago
> We are told that the former elite of the country was nepotistic and elitist against other groups. Who is saying this, and what is their point of reference? The founding elite of this country were the WASPs, and they have been the least insular elite since maybe the Romans. We haven’t had a WASP President since Bush, less than half of Congress is WASPs, and just one of nine people on the Supreme Court is a WASP. It’s pretty much unheard of for an elite ethnic group to give up their power like that without losing it in a war. I mean, I’ll hazzard a guess that e.g. in 100 years the leadership of China will still be overwhelmingly Han Chinese. I’m not optimistic about the next generation of American elite to be perfectly honest. There is new research suggesting that much of immigrants’ fundamental attitudes from their home country, such as social trust, persist for generations after immigration: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594 https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594. So as we replace the WASPs that created this meritocracy with immigrant elites, we can anticipate that the culture will change. I saw this happen first hand in northern Virginia, where I grew up. In 1989 when we moved there, the culture was characterized by the quintessential American republicanism (not as in the party but as in the political arrangement). It was a place that had no Michelin star restaurants and where you’d be embarrassed to wear Italian-made shoes to work. Today it has lots of Asian and middle eastern immigrants. These are good, highly educated, productive people. But to a great degree, they bring their basic attitudes with them. They often look down on “the common people” (as my dad calls them). They might be “liberal” in a paternalistic way, but they’re not egalitarian in the way Virginia historically was. There’s also been an increasing cultural trend where people are elites, in the sense that they have power over other people’s lives, but think they are not elites, and have no corresponding sense of duty, because they’re racial minorities or because they’ve redefined “elites” to mean only billionaires, etc. The fact is that the WASPs that created America’s meritocracy were unusual and frankly kind of odd people. Their descendants do stuff like pay a Indian Brahmin woman $2,000 to have dinner with them and tell them they’re racist: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/dinner-party-from-hell https://www.aei.org/op-eds/dinner-party-from-hell. Can you imagine Indians doing something similar in India? There’s a deep-seated (but in some sense healthy) guilt and sense of undeserved privilege baked into the culture that exists in few others. This characteristic just doesn’t exist to any significant degree among the new ethnic groups that are supplanting them, and I strongly suspect that this difference will be significant.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  To be fair I am perpetually aggrieved that New Orleans has no Michelin star restaurants so I guess that is one way of spinning it as a plus.
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  > Who is saying this, and what is their point of reference? That's an interesting question. The people who most commonly say this are not WASPs and probably were a rival of the WASPs at the time WASPs ran the country. My personal view of this is that prior to Kennedy, the WASPs were more insular and more elitist and actively discriminated. This is based on reading various things. I will give some examples. The Ivies probably all had a Jew quota. We know Harvard certainly did and from what I remember they instituted it in the 1920s when the Jewish population of the school was as high as 25% at that time. I believe I saw recently that even Stanford admitted to having one as recently as the 50s. In fact, Leland Stanford had made some derogatory comments about the Chinese in his constituency which is not so WASPy now. I know also that you find a number of powerful WASPs during the time of WWII were neutral or even slightly in favor of Hitler but not all of them maybe not even most but some definitely were. There is also a history of "white shoe" law firms that were made up of all WASPs that did not allow Jews in. I think books like the Great Gatsby kind of comment on them as well. It's not surprising to me that two different members of the Roosevelt family were presidents. WASPs also implemented anti-miscegenation laws. As well, the immigration system allegedly preferred white protestants over others. This motivated the 1965 immigration Act (look at background of who sponsored it, I think this is significant in that time) Kennedy was the first Irish and Catholic president. Post Kennedy I think what you are talking about is how they are now. I am not trying to argue they are evil, much less so relatively speaking. What I am trying to say is kind of nuanced. I think very implicitly, they are kind of the group everyone thinks of when we think of elitism in the US right? You usually find institutions they founded apologizing for things WASPs did ages ago. Law suits at elite schools seem to imply that admissions policies are displaying nepotism of old family scion WASPs who are undeserving into the schools at the expense of others. You see movies where the antagonists are WASPy elites like in Meet the Parents or Scent of a Woman. The bizarre thing about it is that more and more stories are coming out of Asians with super rich families who gave large donations to the schools and their children are being accepted in spite of the lawsuits and the public apologies for the previous nepotism and quotas. Even situations like with Jared Kushner's father who made a large donation just before Jared was accepted at Harvard. But there are disproportionately high numbers of Jews and Asians in the schools and this is said to be a result of hard work and not nepotism. One or two stories do not prove anything of course but likewise I would not say that everything WASPs did was undeserved. This isn't to say that there aren't undeserving WASPs in high positions or very talented minorities but no one is perfect. What I am saying is that I see a setup here where elitism, discrimination, and nepotism were shunned when done by one group but humans being humans, the new elite who surpassed the old does the same things. I am not very optimistic about it either. I predict things will become very tribal.

rayiner 4y ago

> We are told that the former elite of the country was nepotistic and elitist against other groups. Who is saying this, and what is their point of reference? The founding elite of this country were the WASPs, and they have been the least insular elite since maybe the Romans. We haven’t had a WASP President since Bush, less than half of Congress is WASPs, and just one of nine people on the Supreme Court is a WASP. It’s pretty much unheard of for an elite ethnic group to give up their power like that without losing it in a war. I mean, I’ll hazzard a guess that e.g. in 100 years the leadership of China will still be overwhelmingly Han Chinese. I’m not optimistic about the next generation of American elite to be perfectly honest. There is new research suggesting that much of immigrants’ fundamental attitudes from their home country, such as social trust, persist for generations after immigration: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594 https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594. So as we replace the WASPs that created this meritocracy with immigrant elites, we can anticipate that the culture will change. I saw this happen first hand in northern Virginia, where I grew up. In 1989 when we moved there, the culture was characterized by the quintessential American republicanism (not as in the party but as in the political arrangement). It was a place that had no Michelin star restaurants and where you’d be embarrassed to wear Italian-made shoes to work. Today it has lots of Asian and middle eastern immigrants. These are good, highly educated, productive people. But to a great degree, they bring their basic attitudes with them. They often look down on “the common people” (as my dad calls them). They might be “liberal” in a paternalistic way, but they’re not egalitarian in the way Virginia historically was. There’s also been an increasing cultural trend where people are elites, in the sense that they have power over other people’s lives, but think they are not elites, and have no corresponding sense of duty, because they’re racial minorities or because they’ve redefined “elites” to mean only billionaires, etc. The fact is that the WASPs that created America’s meritocracy were unusual and frankly kind of odd people. Their descendants do stuff like pay a Indian Brahmin woman $2,000 to have dinner with them and tell them they’re racist: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/dinner-party-from-hell https://www.aei.org/op-eds/dinner-party-from-hell. Can you imagine Indians doing something similar in India? There’s a deep-seated (but in some sense healthy) guilt and sense of undeserved privilege baked into the culture that exists in few others. This characteristic just doesn’t exist to any significant degree among the new ethnic groups that are supplanting them, and I strongly suspect that this difference will be significant.

selimthegrim 4y ago
To be fair I am perpetually aggrieved that New Orleans has no Michelin star restaurants so I guess that is one way of spinning it as a plus.
onetimeusename 4y ago
> Who is saying this, and what is their point of reference? That's an interesting question. The people who most commonly say this are not WASPs and probably were a rival of the WASPs at the time WASPs ran the country. My personal view of this is that prior to Kennedy, the WASPs were more insular and more elitist and actively discriminated. This is based on reading various things. I will give some examples. The Ivies probably all had a Jew quota. We know Harvard certainly did and from what I remember they instituted it in the 1920s when the Jewish population of the school was as high as 25% at that time. I believe I saw recently that even Stanford admitted to having one as recently as the 50s. In fact, Leland Stanford had made some derogatory comments about the Chinese in his constituency which is not so WASPy now. I know also that you find a number of powerful WASPs during the time of WWII were neutral or even slightly in favor of Hitler but not all of them maybe not even most but some definitely were. There is also a history of "white shoe" law firms that were made up of all WASPs that did not allow Jews in. I think books like the Great Gatsby kind of comment on them as well. It's not surprising to me that two different members of the Roosevelt family were presidents. WASPs also implemented anti-miscegenation laws. As well, the immigration system allegedly preferred white protestants over others. This motivated the 1965 immigration Act (look at background of who sponsored it, I think this is significant in that time) Kennedy was the first Irish and Catholic president. Post Kennedy I think what you are talking about is how they are now. I am not trying to argue they are evil, much less so relatively speaking. What I am trying to say is kind of nuanced. I think very implicitly, they are kind of the group everyone thinks of when we think of elitism in the US right? You usually find institutions they founded apologizing for things WASPs did ages ago. Law suits at elite schools seem to imply that admissions policies are displaying nepotism of old family scion WASPs who are undeserving into the schools at the expense of others. You see movies where the antagonists are WASPy elites like in Meet the Parents or Scent of a Woman. The bizarre thing about it is that more and more stories are coming out of Asians with super rich families who gave large donations to the schools and their children are being accepted in spite of the lawsuits and the public apologies for the previous nepotism and quotas. Even situations like with Jared Kushner's father who made a large donation just before Jared was accepted at Harvard. But there are disproportionately high numbers of Jews and Asians in the schools and this is said to be a result of hard work and not nepotism. One or two stories do not prove anything of course but likewise I would not say that everything WASPs did was undeserved. This isn't to say that there aren't undeserving WASPs in high positions or very talented minorities but no one is perfect. What I am saying is that I see a setup here where elitism, discrimination, and nepotism were shunned when done by one group but humans being humans, the new elite who surpassed the old does the same things. I am not very optimistic about it either. I predict things will become very tribal.