(Article changed on April 21, 2013 at 14:17)
However, in the 1960 presidential election, Senator John F. Kennedy, a Harvard-educated Irish American Catholic, narrowly defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon, a Quaker. JFK's election was a set back for the dominance of WASP culture as the prestige culture. Of course, as everybody knows, JFK was assassinated before he had completed his first term as president. Perhaps he was assassinated because he was perceived to be a threat to the dominance of WASP culture in
In any event, WASP culture was indeed truly threatened by the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Subsequently, WASP culture was further threatened by the emergence of a new wave of feminist activism in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, WASP culture was threatened by the anti-war movement against the Vietnam war.
For understandable reasons, many white Americans felt threatened by these various developments centered in the 1960s, including many white Americans who were not Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
In his book DECADE OF NIGHTMARES: THE END OF THE SIXTIES AND THE MAKING OF THE EIGHTIES (2006), Philip Jenkins perceptively details how conservative Republicans capitalized on the understandable fears of white Americans by using their anti-60s rhetoric to rally reaction to the events remembered as centered in the 1960s. Along with their anti-60s rhetoric came a nostalgia for the supposedly good old days of the 1950s -- before all the troubles of the turbulent 1960s started.
Then the dominance of WASP culture as the prestige culture suffered another set back in the 2008 presidential election when Senator Barack Obama, an African American Protestant with a Harvard Law School degree, handily defeated Senator John McCain, a Vietnam war hero.
Even though the economy was not working his favor, President Obama managed to win re-election decisively in 2012.
In the recently published paperback edition of her 2012 electioneering book WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH WHITE PEOPLE? FINDING OUR WAY IN THE NEXT AMERICA, Joan Walsh has added a succinct postscript about the 2012 election results. She notes that "an estimated 93 million whites voted in 2012" (page 310). Of these white voters, President Obama "got a total of 65.4 million votes" or almost 40 percent of the white vote. As a result, "57 percent of his votes were white [votes]."
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