[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Premmy

yes.


Well, It's alot better than just "black" or "asian" where you don't even get an ethnic or national identity and a Religious background as indicators.
It's less a broad sweeping term and more a very specific term as indicated by having two other modifiers.

Yeah, but as a Caucasian who is a Christian Protestant, I can tell you we aren't all Republican nutjobs. :P
(My predominantly Italian / Irish descent might eliminate "Anglo-Saxon" from the picture, though.)

I'd say the difference is certainly the fact that "WASPs", as beneficiaries of institutional privilege, lack many of the legitimate hardships faced by minority groups that members of those groups face solely due to their minority status. So I'd say stereotyping white Anglo-Saxon protestants is less offensive than stereotyping a minority group because there's no historical or cultural repression lacing the insult. Calling all whites "ignorant" or "rednecks" kind of loses its sting when those categorized still by and large have an institutional and socio-political framework in place that facilitates their success and ensures their acceptance.

That being said, suggesting that stereotyping a privileged group is less offensive than stereotyping a repressed group isn't the same as suggesting that it's not offensive at all. Stereotyping of all forms and kinds is objectively "bad," and while you can and should parcel it out in terms of variants and degrees, in the end an "enlightened liberal" only hurts his cause if, in the process of arguing against stereotyping gays or blacks, he or she stereotypes whites or Christians. That same person still is right to claim that his or her ethnic or religious stereotypes are "less offensive," but they still can offend, and thus they still detract from his or her argument.

(/my opinion)