Dominant Culture: White Anglo-Saxon Protestants in American Society - Research Paper

Introduction

In society, dominant culture refers to the group, which has many members and is often considered to have more power compared to other groups. besides, dominant culture can be referred to as a cultural practice, which is dominant in administrative, societal, and economic entities where many cultures are available. In American society, for example, the dominant culture in the country is that of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. In America, whites are many compared to African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. The dominant culture in America has its values, attitudes, and beliefs. Besides, over the years, the culture has evolved. The United States was established on goals of tough independence and the idea that every individual is liable for their life and accomplishments. Inside this system the ideas of freedom and independence are significant. Most prevailing society youths have objectives of setting up their lives separate from that of their families, regularly moving huge distances from their parents. However different societies place a higher incentive on the group instead of the individual, and network ties might be requisite. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants' culture, their attitudes, values, and beliefs, as well as how the culture has evolved.

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Origins of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants

White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are the culture that dominates America today. An article by the BBC (n.d) indicated that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were the main immigrant groups to settle in America in the late 17th and mid-18th centuries. They are frequently alluded to as the 'old immigrants' (BBC, n.d). The cultural group initially originated from northern Europe, particularly from Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia (BBC, n.d). Settlers from these nations kept on moving to America all through the nineteenth century (BBC, n.d). The guarantee of modest or free land, higher wages, better housing and assisted section plans allured enormous numbers to pursue their precursors in the quest for the American Dream (BBC, n.d). Numerous people in the groups were talented and frequently had families previously living in America who had orchestrated employments and housing for them (BBC, n.d). This enabled them to produce fruitful and prosperous lives in America. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestants controlled the banks, business, governmental issues and law (BBC, n.d). Furthermore, Yang (2018) indicated that the combination of the winner and early settlers verify dominance, power, and influence concerning the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestants set their foot in America earlier than other immigrant groups and demonstrated more composure and more objective situated than later immigrant populations (Yang, 2018). The cultural group had an upper hand to claim ownership for land, which enabled them to systematize their monetary intrigue, societal position, religious pervasion, and cultural foundation (Yang, 2018).

Dominant Attitudes, Beliefs, and Customs of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants

Beliefs

White Anglo-Saxon Protestants believe in religion. According to Jordan (2017), North Americans have always made appeals to the expansion of American religion and American religious settlements such as the separation of church and state. The author added that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants linked their heritage to British imperialism (Jordan, 2017). Josiah Strong indicated that the cultural group's religion was more vigorous, spiritual, and more religious than any other cultural group (Jordan, 2017). The author implies that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants believe in manifest destiny (Jordan, 2017). The second belief is freedom and liberty. Jordan (2017) asserted that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants fought for a free and unoppressive society where the state's political views and restrictions were unoppressive. The third belief is self-government. Jordan (2017) stated that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants have developed an ideal, social, and political state even though it took them 8 centuries to do so.

Protection of American Conservatism From Liberalism by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants

Kagan (2019) indicated that from the mid-nineteenth century forward, a steady theme in American history has been the dread that an Anglo-Saxon Protestant United States was being undermined both from inside outside by the calls for the freedom and liberation of African Americans, and from without by the inundation of non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Protestant workers from Ireland, from Japan and China, from southern, eastern and focal Europe, and later from Latin America and the Middle East. The political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who once put forth the defense for authoritarianism as an important stage in modernization, in his further developed years stressed that the United States' Anglo-Saxon Protestant identity was being overwhelmed by radicalism as multiculturalism (Kagan, 2019). Huntington both anticipated and warily supported another white nativism (Kagan, 2019). His predictions were because in his post-Cold War works about a conflict of civic establishments, he asked Americans to pull once more from the world and keep an eye on their Western civilization (Kagan, 2019). Besides, on their discussion about assimilation in America, Sorrell, Khalsa, Ecklund, and Emerson (2019) indicated that immigration literature comprehended assimilation as acceptance into the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture positing that immigrants would adapt to the traits of the dominant group. According to the authors, the questions in mainstream society remain whether the dominant American culture would manage to assimilate with immigrants irrespective of their race, nation of origin, ethnicity, and religion (Sorrell et al., 2019). Furthermore, Yang (2018) affirmed that Americanism, from its start, has been only prototyped with the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture's design. The Indians, the African slaves, the Asian railroad works, the Hispanics, the Muslims, among numerous different groups have ended up burdened and underestimated, because of the unmitigated power chain of command, the courses of events of their appearances, and the recorded conditions of their appearances (Yang, 2018). They all have needed to figure out how to adjust to and fit with the institutionalized, raised, and unchangeable Americanism by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture (Yang, 2018). If not, groups and people, who contrasted from the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultures in skin color, religion, and in language, would be seen as less American or essentially as unassimilable outsiders, if not a risk to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture dominance (Yang, 2018).

References

BBC. (n.d). The Open Door policy and immigration to 1928. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zkng87h/revision/3

Jordan, R. P. (2017). Secularism and Empire in the United States, 1780-1900. Religions, (8)7. doi: 10.3390/rel8070117

Kagan, R. (2019). The strongmen strike back. Democracy and Disorder. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/FP_20190318_strongmen_kagan.pdf

Sorrell, K., Khalsa, S., Ecklund, E. H., & Emerson, M. O. (2019). Immigrant identities and the shaping of a racialized American self. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, vol.5. doi: 10.1177/2378023119852788

Yang, M. (2018). Trumpism: a disfigured Americanism. Palgrave Communications 4(117) doi:10.1057/s41599-018-0170-0