Will Our Politics Always Be Defined by WASP-y "Decorum"?
Senate Democratic leadership convening on April 16, 2016 to urge Senator McConnell to give Judge Merrick Garland a fair confirmation process to the Supreme Court. Photo by Senate Democrats.
America, on the whole, is not a WASPy country. By sheer numbers, most people—including most white people—are not cut from the stuffy cloth of upper-class white culture. Over 300 languages are spoken in the U.S. every day. Only a fifth of Americans say they belong in the “upper classes.” And by 2045, the number of Americans from a non-white background is projected to surpass the number of white Americans, producing a so-called “majority-minority.”
Yet culturally, our politics remains stuck in a half-updated era of Mad Men, in which an old impulse to demand WASPy cultural conduct has merged with a new impulse to elevate diverse and marginalized voices. Our ideal candidate is one who checks off an intersectional box—nonwhite, nonheterosexual, non-Christian—without breaching the old rules of “decorum” established by WASPs centuries ago: wear a suit (or a dress—but don’t make it too flashy or colorful). Use “academic” English. The fork goes on the left side of the plate, the knife and spoon on the right. Avoid hip-hop and rap music. Don’t curse.
In elite Democratic circles, the figure who personifies this ideal is a Pete Buttigieg or a Barack Obama; in elite Republican circles, it’s Tim Scott or Candace Owens. None of these figures fundamentally offend the WASPy cultural sensibility, yet all offer the political world an opportunity to prove its purported lack of prejudice.
Politicians who stray from this one-track cultural sensibility face incessant condescension and ridicule. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York’s 14th congressional district, is a case in point. A Bronx native, she has shaken up Washington’s cultural status quo by holding video-game fundraisers on Twitch, wearing bright red lipstick and gold hoop earrings in the chambers of Congress, and swearing when she damn well pleases. For her refusal to conform—and in large part for letting her Latina roots shine through—Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has become one of Washington’s most despised figures.
But the WASPs’ chokehold on American political culture transcends racial lines. Our politics is hostile to anyone who grew up in a distinctly non-WASPy environment and refuses to shed their cultural roots for the sake of political expediency. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Brooklyn-born Jew of working-class roots, has long been mocked by the political world for speaking too aggressively and waving his hands too eagerly. It’s no coincidence that a 2008 Stanford University study found that 47 percent of Jews have been told that “their speech style is too aggressive.” Earlier this year, when Senator Bernie Sanders was interviewed for the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement for president, this WASPy intolerance manifested like something out of a satire.
Perched in a glossy board room overlooking Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, a member of the board asked him, “What are you likely to fail at or to do poorly as president?” “Look,” the senator responded, “I don’t tolerate bullshit terribly well, and I come from a different background than a lot of other people who run the country. I’m not good at backslapping. I’m not good at pleasantries.” The board stared back goggle-eyed. What Senator Sanders outlined here is not rude—or, as the interview commentary put it, “curmudgeonly”—but rather reflects a difference in approach between two distinct American cultures. Just a single member of the board voted to advance Mr. Sanders to the next phase of the endorsement process, as their cultural intolerance seemed to preclude them from any serious consideration of his candidacy.
Later that same day, then-candidate Pete Buttigieg made an appearance before the editorial board. As the Times applauded his “deep baritone” and “evenness of tone,” Mr. Buttigieg mocked those who are in the practice of “waving [their] arms,” a clear slight to Senator Sanders. Mr. Buttigieg has “mastered” his emotions, he said of himself, unlike “others.”
Importantly, the Times eagerly asked Mr. Buttigieg two questions about his status as a gay man, but neglected altogether to ask Mr. Sanders a question about how he could be the first Jewish-American elected to the presidency. Why? Mr. Buttigieg, a Rhodes Scholar and smooth-talker extraordinaire, shares the board’s cultural sensibility, making it easier for them to embrace his gay identity. Mr. Sanders, however, comes from a working-class Jewish background that is of no interest to the board because it offends their cultural sensibility.
None of this is to say that non-WASPiness in our politics is inherently good. President Trump—a very distinct cultural aberration in U.S. presidential history—brings none of America’s beauty to the White House. He cheats on his wives and flaunts his wealth for the sake of cheating and flaunting wealth. He embodies a hollow, self-serving caricature of working-class white culture, reminiscent of his days as a brash New York business tycoon. That’s not what I’m looking for. Far from it. We need to embrace genuine cultural pluralism in our politics, not populist shams of it.
And at what loss does our politics maintain this policy of WASPy intolerance? “No country,” essayist Randolph Bourne wrote in 1916, “has perhaps had so great indigenous genius which had so little influence on the country’s traditions and expressions.” By embracing only those who conform rigidly to the rules of the WASPs, our nation is missing out on a huge pool of untapped perspectives and political talent. Imagine all the natural-born leaders we’re neglecting by continuing with this cultural narrow-mindedness. Our greatest asset—the cosmopolitan diversity of this country—is all but wasted in our politics in favor of what Bourne called “English snobberies, English religion, English literary styles, English literary reverences and canons, English ethics, English superiorities.” The WASPs’ cultural monopoly must fall, or our nation’s politics will never realize its full pluralistic potential.
Tim Vanable is a first-year at Columbia College studying American Studies. A jazz guitarist from Syracuse, NY, he is pursuing a Special Concentration in Jazz Studies and loves to talk politics.