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Book Review: Fussell on Class

(astralcodexten.substack.com)
136 points DaoIsTheWay | 1 comments | 05 Mar 21 02:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.387s | source
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etaioinshrdlu ◴[05 Mar 21 05:43 UTC] No.26353226[source]▶
What the author calls Upper Class I would call "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or WASP. It doesn't really seem like they are exactly above other classes of people in the US today, however. Not politically, financially, or culturally, they are not entirely on top.
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1. skissane ◴[05 Mar 21 06:24 UTC] No.26353488[source]▶
> What the author calls Upper Class I would call "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or WASP

I haven't read the book, just this review of it. But the review says:

> The upper class is old money. The people you think of as rich and famous - tech billionaires, celebrities, whatever - aren't upper class. However privileged they started off, they still had to put in at least a smidgeon of work to get their money, which disqualifies them. Real uppers inherit.

By that definition, the vast majority of "WASP" people are not "Upper Class". The "Upper Class" in the US would be heavily "WASP", but I would expect it is gradually becoming somewhat more diverse.