Word: wasps
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...When a Wasp thought of his duty to the moral law, the guide he consulted was his own conscience. The conscience was a stern interior monitor. "In Adam's fall/ We sinned all," began the New England Primer. (They weren't big on self-esteem in the 18th century.) Conscience has the added advantage of being portable. Many cultures rely on peer pressure to enforce their rules and regulations. The Wasp with a conscience could feel guilty all by himself. Conscience also reinforced the work ethic: if you made good, you -- and everyone else -- knew that you were good...
...Wasp ways keep their hold over American life, even as Wasps slipped to minority status? As early as 1858, Lincoln noted that "perhaps half our people" were not descendants of the founding generation. "If they look back through ((American)) history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none." Their connection to America derived instead from a reverence for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which was "the father of all moral principle in them," according to Lincoln. This was "the electric cord . . . that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty- loving men together...
...shrinkage of literal Wasps as a factor in the American mosaic is as inevitable as the multiplication tables, and a matter of little moment. What matters more is the shrinking of their values in the American mind. If Americans don't seem particularly hardworking or civic-minded these days, that is, at least in part, because the ways of the Wasp (now usually labeled "middle-class" or "Eurocentric") are such common targets of criticism $ and abuse. Anyone evincing them is apt to be labeled repressed, inauthentic, uptight or an "ice person...
...danger is not that a new post-Wasp personality will emerge. A nation's character is not so mutable; it takes major upheaval -- revolution, conquest -- to transform it. What is possible, however, is that the character America already possesses will slip into chronic malfunction. Most of us will keep behaving the way we always have, without knowing why, while the rest will act differently, simply for the sake of being different. It is a sad end for an ideal -- especially for one that has been as fruitful as the Wasp...
...says anthropologist Stephenson. "We are walking contradictions." Kyoung-Hi Song, 27, was born in Korea but lived much of her youth abroad as her father was posted from one United Nations assignment to the next. Despite that cosmopolitan upbringing, her parents balked when Kyoung-Hi married Robert Dickson, a WASP from Connecticut. They boycotted the 1990 wedding, and have not contacted their daughter since. The Dicksons hope that the birth of their first child, expected in April, will change that...