Maria Shriver's Daughter Waitlisted at BC

coureur
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:42:38 +0000

The Kennedys were desperate to fit in with the “good” people of Boston & initially struggled for acceptance among the Bluebloods. As Catholics (expecially the Irish) were shut out of the moneyed WASPy world, they started their own academic network up & down the East coast & out in the midwest with, most notably, Notre Dame. The Kennedys continued to claw their way into the WASPy world of the ivy league. They were never a part of the Catholic college network. Perhaps this is why BC is snubbing the new generation?<<




It’s certainly true that the Kennedy’s were and are Irish/Catholic and therefore, by definition, not WASP, the actual record indicates that it didn’t take them all that long to get into the blueblood schools. Consider:

P.J. Kennedy - his parents came over on the boat from Ireland. He went to Boston College.

Joseph P. Kennedy - son of P.J. Went to the prestigious Boston Latin School and Harvard. It’s true he was blackballed from the Porcellian final club at Harvard, but then so was the arch-WASP Franklin Roosevelt.

Joseph Jr., John F., Robert F., and Edward Kennedy - sons of Joseph P. All four graduated from Harvard. John also attended Princeton briefly before dropping out due to illness. And before college all four graduated from elite, blueblood prep schools: Joseph Jr. & John from Choate and Robert & Edward from Milton Academy.

And it has continued on into the next generations. Lots of Harvard/Radcliffe. Lots of Ivy League. They just don’t seem all shut out of the blueblood WASP schools to me. It took my own WASP family seven generations after immigrating from England to get the first family member into Harvard. It took the Kennedys two.

And now Katherine Schwarzenegger has come full circle - back to BC where her great, great, grandfather P. J. went to school.

(I’m not sure where this Notre Dame connection comes in. Must be some other branch of the Kennedy family.)