Despite comprising 60 percent of the population, America’s once dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestants appear to be losing their special place in society. According to Gustavo Chacra of Brazil’s Estadao newspaper, this process may be a sign of progress, but it is not without its injustices.
For Estado, Gustavo Chacra writes in part:
Until the last presidential election, candidates had always been White and male. The only non-Protestant president was John Kennedy, who was Catholic. Obviously, the first Black man is Barack Obama. New York has already elected Jewish and Black mayors, as has Washington D.C. California has an Austrian governor. But that still isn’t enough to allow us to say that WASPs don’t dominate politics. But what if we look at the Supreme Court? With the retirement of John Paul Stevens, which was announced last week, there will be no Protestants left on the Supreme Court. Despite representing almost 60 percent of the American population, the once dominant Protestants will be gone from the third branch [the judiciary]. The other members are Catholic (5) and Jewish (2). Of course, that is, if a Protestant isn’t named this time.
The U.S. isn’t the only country to see a ruling elite lose ground. Based on the Lebanese Constitution, Lebanese Maronite Christians still hold the post of president. But divided since the civil war, today they hold less political power than Sunnis and Shiites. The Afrikaners (Whites of Dutch origin) of South Africa who controlled the country during Apartheid, today see political power in the hands of Blacks and economic power in the hands of Whites of British origin.
At the same time, protecting minorities ends up hurting those who are born male, White and Protestant. The majority of these WASPs aren’t born to a wealthy family from the Upper East Side of New York and didn’t study in a private school in Connecticut or graduate from Princeton. They are ordinary people, unemployed in Detroit or Chicago, who end up suffering because they don’t belong to a minority.
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