WASP Microaggressions (MY #METOO MOMENT)

I've noticed I strongly favor words beginning with intense, brash sounds. Words which invite you to say them quickly and loudly. The paradigmatic example might be the greeting: "WHAaat's up, DUuude?" Only after returning from 6 years in England do I realize the quality-of-life cost of misalignment between natural diction and social environment. In England, people often greet each other by softly mumbling something under their breath vaguely in the direction of the person they're greeting. It's hard to communicate how genuinely difficult it was for me to behave this way. We're likely to underestimate the quality-of-life implications of tiny things that happen many times every day. Even after being back in the USA for 8 months, I still consciously experience some joy upon exclaiming phrases like "WHAaat's up, DUuude?"

This is my #metoo moment. Coming from a working-class Irish Catholic family in the Northeast of the USA, I am only now awakening to the severity of my oppression all these years...

More seriously, I really do think it's conceivable that working-class, off-white men (e.g. Irish, Italian) have heritable dispositions toward louder, wilder, more intense speech. And that American and British WASPs either have heritable dispositions toward meeker, more docile speech, or they have traits that better allow them to cultivate such speech — either of which creates a higher cognitive load for wild men, such as myself, who would seek to enter the WASP World Order. There are no laws or rules prohibiting me from entering and climbing the hierarchy of international academia, for instance, but compared to an otherwise-equal WASP, everything is going to be a little more painful for me. The satisfaction of it all will be weaker, and the little annoyances greater. I'm not complaining at all — ultimately I consider it much more blessing than curse to be temperamentally unsuited to the institutional order.

One piece of data consistent with this theory is that, throughout my life, I've had way more close Italian friends than you'd expect from chance alone. In high school and college you could arguably chalk it up to where I lived in NJ and Philly, although if you drill down into neighborhoods and social circles I honestly doubt I was disproportionately exposed to Italians. But in England too, two of my closest friends were Italian nationals, and now that I think about it we often lamented our WASP subjection, even if we didn't phrase it that way... One of my mother's closest friends is an Italian national who was our neighbor for a few years in NJ, but she was the only Italian in our neighborhood; it's not like my mom was surrounded by them. And my mom isn't very social.

I also think this would be consistent with life history theory, i.e. WASPs evolved a basket of traits that make sense for slower, safer reproductive strategies (meekly mumble whatever you can manage with your boss's dick in your mouth, proceed to enjoy a secure retirement); whereas off-white Catholics evolved a set of traits for faster, riskier strategies (talk shit, drive fast, and fuck mad hot bitches — then get stabbed dead in a pool hall!)

What do the WASPs do with men like me, who make it all the way to 33 without getting stabbed and still insist on driving fast and talking shit?