![]() ![]() These voting rights and demographic changes made the presidency of Barack Obama possible. "All these immigrants started coming in from Latin America and Asia, many Catholic or not Christian," says David Hollinger, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley. 1 for a lot of Americans, have been totally embraced, by the Republican Party especially," Preston says.Ĭivil rights laws began to break down barriers for black Americans, while the 1965 immigration law ended quota systems that had for decades heavily favored immigrants from Western Europe. "Catholics, who used to be public enemy No. Kennedy, along with the modern reformation of the Catholic Church with the Second Vatican Council, precipitated shifts in religious alliances that have had profound effects on U.S. The election of the first (and thus far only) Catholic president in John F. "Franklin Roosevelt appointed more Catholics and Jews to his presidency than all previous presidents combined," says Andrew Preston, a Cambridge University historian.Ĭhange really began to accelerate during the 1960s, for a number of reasons. Real expertise and individual merit started to matter as much as coming from the right families (at least for men). Digby Baltzell's classic 1964 study The Protestant Establishment.īut the exclusion of religious minorities from the top ranks of government had already begun to give way with the Great Depression and World War II. "I'm only half Jewish, so can't I play nine holes?" Goldwater quipped, according to E. The rules were so rigid that Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator and 1964 GOP presidential nominee, wasn't allowed to play golf at a club outside Washington that was literally exclusive. Back then, Protestants composed three-quarters of the academic, military and business elites, according to contemporary academic studies. None of this would have seemed possible a half-century ago. "This reflects the fact that we are much more of an open society than we were previously, but we are also a society that by the numbers is increasingly diverse." "Not a single group can hold onto power in any particular institution going forward," says Guy-Uriel Charles, founding director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics. And since the 2009 confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, the court also includes three women justices for the first time ever. ![]() Instead, there are three Jews and six Catholics - one of them Hispanic, one of them black. The Supreme Court, for the first time in its history, does not boast of a single justice who is Protestant. Among the four top congressional leaders, only one is a WASP - Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who happens to be married to an Asian-American. The State Department was once dominated by old-stock aristocrats but hasn't been led by a white man since 1997. ![]() There are plenty of white men with power in this country, but it's become harder to find a WASP holding onto one of the top rungs of the political ladder. "If one was Catholic, or surely Irish Catholic, or Jewish, forget about it if one was black, don't even think about it."īecause of the country's changing population and shifts in educational opportunities, none of that is true anymore. "The minimal but unrelenting qualification was to be white, Anglo-Saxon in heritage and Protestant in religion," the cultural critic Joseph Epstein writes in his book Snobbery. That might not seem like such a big deal - especially when you consider they are running against the first African-American president.īut all of these individuals are emblematic of an enormous shift in both American demographics and political power.įifty years ago, the military, foreign service and top political offices were all dominated by WASPs - white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But the Republicans make up the first presidential ticket in history not to feature a Protestant. Just looking at Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, you might not think of them as cultural pioneers. President Obama is the only Protestant on either 2012 presidential ticket. The Obamas walk back to the White House after attending Easter service at St. ![]()
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