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By Andy Bowers Posted Monday, March 1, 2004, at 12:54 PM PT In covering this year's presidential contest, journalists 30 keep 31 using 32 the 33 phrase "Boston Brahmin" to describe Massachusetts Sen. Holmes used it both in a novel and in an 1860 Atlantic Monthly 34 article called "The Brahmin Caste of New England" to describe the region's upper crust. The words caste and Brahmin indicate where Holmes got the idea. In India, a Brahmin is "a member of the highest or priestly caste among the Hindus," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In large part, he used the term to refer to families who produced generation after generation of scholars at institutions like Harvard. These Brahmins frequently intermarried, founded and patronized Boston cultural institutions, and had some connection with nearby Harvard. The Brahmins are also well-known for their hostility to the Irish and other immigrants whose large numbers transformed the city in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In his book Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882, author Roger Daniels discusses a group known as the Immigration Restriction League, which was founded in 1894 by recent Harvard graduates. The league favored drastic curbs on further immigration, and the man who would become its main advocate in Congress was the thoroughly Brahmin Sen. In 1891, when he was in the House of Representatives, Lodge had introduced a bill that would have required new immigrants to pass a literacy test before entering the country. Although some now think of the Kennedys as Brahmins because of their wealth and prestige, the family was certainly not part of the WASP club when it began its rags-to-riches climb. As for whether John Kerry qualifies as a Brahmin, the answer is yes and no. On the yes side, consider that his middle name is Forbes. In fact, Kerry's mother was related to at least two traditional Brahmin families, the Forbeses and the Winthrops. Yet Kerry himself is a practicing Catholic, and many in Massachusetts long assumed Kerry was an Irish name. However, the senator says he learned from a Boston Globe investigation last year that his paternal grandfather was actually born Jewish in what's now the Czech Republic. Before emigrating to America in 1905, Fritz Kohn changed his name to Frederick Kerry. So, it's certainly fair to say that New Englander John Kerry grew up in a privileged household. But whether he's really a Brahmin depends on whether you think that term has evolved to include a Catholic with both Protestant and Jewish roots--and who went to Yale. The origin of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I never met a Brahmin who referred to himself or herself (or to one of their class) as a Brahmin. They called themselves Yankees when they called themselves anything, but usually they referred to the towns where one's family had lived for a few hundred years. Nor were they of one mind about anything, especially regarding desirable ethnic characteristics. For many old rich Yankee families, the nativist, snob stereotype held steady and true. Catholics and Jews were tolerated, even used profitably, at work. But for social occasions, and for general palling around, the divide was clear and deep. But in other families one encountered a charming, cosmopolitan sensibility. My friend Bill Coolidge always said his family "wouldn't have an ounce of brains" if it weren't for his Jewish great-grandmother. He joshed me about my own Lace Curtain origins, but knew a lot about, and sympathized with, the tough guys in the Irish neighborhoods. Each month Coolidge held a "Sunday Luncheon" for his crowd, which was basically meritocratic. Important Yankees, to be sure -- including the President of MIT, the Chief Physician at Massachusetts General, the Chairman of Raytheon, a United States Senator -- but also an Irish Catholic litigator, a Russian Jewish judge, and a Chinese literary scholar. Well, he sure would have been on Bill Coolidge's invitation list. In the anti-Brahmin category is that he went to BC Law and was influenced by one-time Congressman Fr. BC is the anti-Brahmin institution that gave us Drinan, Tip O'Neill, Warren Rudman, Billy Bulger etc. Plus, whether he's Irish or not, he's certainly fallen on the Irish-American, Kennedy, side of the issues.
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