'America's Angry White Men'

Submitted by Mastodon on Sun, 2013-11-03 20:12

Article here. Excerpt:

'And, like Beale, a lot of the current crop of the outraged are a lot of white men. Not all of them, of course. There are plenty of angry men of color and plenty of angry white women. Just look at those Tea Party rallies! But as a political movement, as the rank and file of America's fulminators -- whether the Tea Party or organizations on the extreme right wing, or the guys, always guys, who open fire on their classmates at school or their co-workers and colleagues at work, or the men, almost always men, who beat and murder those they claim to love, or the young men, always young men, who walk into movie theaters of places of worship with guns blazing -- well it's pretty hard to deny that they're virtually all white men. (And let us be clear: just because virtually all these cases are middle- and lower-middle class white men, does not for a nanosecond mean that all white men are crazed killers or white supremacists. All members of the Mafia may be Italian, but not all Italians are members of the Mafia.)

Yet deny it we do, often by assuming that these outbursts are motivated by anything at all -- mental illness, access to guns, video games, whatever -- other than gender. We'd notice, of course, if it were poor black girls pulling the triggers in school shootings, or women who walked into their workplaces with semi-automatic guns firing, or all Asians or Jews or Latinos who were shooting up our movie theaters and political rallies. But white men? Must be some other factor.

It seems so obvious, and yet so startling to see middle-class white American men, arguably the most privileged human beings on the planet (excluding, of course, hereditary aristocracies and the upper classes) fuming with such self-righteous outrage. (The comedian Louis CK gets this sense of privilege: "I'm a white man," he says, "How many advantages can one persona have?"
...
What unites them, I came to understand, was a sentiment I called "aggrieved entitlement." Raised to believe that this was "their" country, simply by being born white and male, they were entitled to a good job by which they could support a family as sole breadwinners, and to deference at home from adoring wives and obedient children. And not only do their kids and their wives have ideas of their own; not only is the competition for those jobs increasingly ferocious; they've also been slammed by predatory lenders, corporate moguls, Wall Street short-sellers betting against their own companies and manipulated by cynical elites into believing that their adversaries were not the ones downsizing, outsourcing and cutting their jobs, but those assorted others -- women, immigrants, gays, black people -- who were asserting their claims for a piece of the pie. The middle class white American man expected to be more Don Draper, all self-made , in control, and upwardly mobile. Instead he's more like William Foster, another fictional character who's fallen off the cliff into that dark abyss of despair, violence and madness.

Today's Angry White Men look backward, nostalgically at the world they have lost. Some organize politically to restore "their" country; some descend into madness; others lash out violently at a host of scapegoats. Theirs is a fight to restore, to reclaim more than just what they feel entitled to socially or economically -- it's also to restore their sense of manhood, to reclaim that sense of dominance and power to which they also feel entitled. They don't get mad, they want to get even -- but with whom?'

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Angry white men-- angry for a reason. Hmm. Maybe an anger at a "loss of entitlement". "This is OUR country, after all-- why should WE be obliged to SHARE it?"

Simplistic and narrow an interpretation. Maybe for some angry white men, it's spot on. But what of others? How about getting ripped to shreds in "family court", or denied a job opportunity because, well, you're not only white but also male. (No one tells you this; they just don't forward your resume on, perhaps, for certain positions because, well, there's a number that needs to be made somewhere or federal funding for this or that gets dropped.) Or maybe it has less to do with whiteness and more to do with maleness. How about the man (white or not) who complains to the cops about his abusive mate and is told to buzz off? That could get a fellow angry. Shoot-up-the-store angry? Probably not. But angry, yes.

Anger can come from a lot of places. It need not actually be "sensible", or traceable to a particular act or factor. It can also exist as a symptom of something, such as a neurosis or psychosis, or a personality disorder. But it's there, and everyone has it.

Not just white guys, and not just because they're all entitled princelings.

Speaking of which, I have a question: If the anger of feminists is considered "embracable" and worthy of respect, then I wonder why not that of MRAs, especially when so many of our complaints are just as defensible as theirs? Answer: We're not women.

Whites? Hmm, hard to say. Again, are there not countless articles written about the anger of black youth (read: "young men")? Sure, and it's considered understandable if not unfortunate. And I get it-- I do, insofar as a white guy like me can. So can others "get" the anger of white men, too? Hope so. Since after all, if everyone else you can think of is or can be defensibly angry over real or perceived offenses against their ethnic, sexual, or gender identity, why suddenly can "white males" not also be? Answer: they're white males.

Mmmmm, mmmm-- doesn't make for a good outlook, does it?

My suggestion to society at large is just this: If Dr. King's dream is ever going to be realized, it needs to actually be implemented. It's not sufficient to quote it and respect it. It has to be implemented, like a plan, in people's hearts. Otherwise, with so many angry people: white, black, Hispanic, gay, straight, male, female; there will never be peace.

BTW, folks, I want to mention this thing I discovered just today. The apparent likely winner of the New York City mayoral race (according to a French news article, strangely enough) is Bill de Blasio. I don't know if this is true, I guess we'll find out. But the article mentioned his wife, Chirlane McCray, as being a poet and feminist. So I got curious and went to Wikipedia to read up on her. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirlane_McCray). Imagine my surprise to find out she was once a member of a group called the Combahee River Collective, which Wikipedia describes as "a Black feminist Lesbian organization active in Boston from 1974 to 1980. They are perhaps best known for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement [link added], a key document in the history of contemporary Black feminism and the development of the concepts of identity as used among political organizers and social theorists." Apparently, merciless racist taunting from her white classmates moved her in the direction of taking up race-related matters, which I can't blame her for doing. Feminism of course is a different matter, but everyone has their reasons I suppose (as do MRAs, right?).

Well, Wikipedia mentions she met her husband in 1991 while working for Mayor Dinkins and they fell in love and decided to get married. When asked by the NY Daily News about how a relationship with him could be possible, she replied: "by putting aside the assumptions I had about the form and package my love would come in."

I don't know where Chirlane McCray's opinions about race or feminism, etc. stand these days. People can and do change, but sometimes they stay the same, or change some ways and not in others. The years have that effect. But I'll say that if more people were like Chirlane McCray in this way, perhaps there'd be a bit less anger in the world and more happiness. After all, she and Bill look awful happy together, don't they?

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2013-11-04 02:08

When I read about the damage that men have done, I agree.

We men have done very bad things -- we can count on feminists to remind us all the time.

And when they remind us that we have done bad, I will remind them that we have done good.

If feminists are going to lay the problems of the world at the feet of men, exclusively...

Then men must demand ownership of all the good... exclusively.

We have done it all: the science, math, biology, chemistry, physics, poetry, art, music, literature - it is all male.

Now most of the good and most of the bad were done by the top 1 and bottom 1 percent. But f my son is going to be reminded that he, as a man, inherits the bad, then I will inform him that he, as a man, inherits the good.

I am moving beyond aversion to feminists -- it is turning into hatred. I have now lost more friends because of this new awareness and I do not care and I let them know and I feel such freedom in not caring what feminists think. I feel good. I am a man. And I hate feminists.

But this brings me to my daughter. What am I to tell her?

I am to tell her that in creating civilization, men had to act swiftly to ensure health care, art, plumbing, buildings and so on. And in the process, women's achievements were set aside. But not only their good, but their bad, too. For women can be just as evil as men.

I want my daughter to know that women have tried to do great things -- that women are good. But I want her to know that women can be evil. Why? Because that makes her more self aware; more complex; more human.

Because one grows from overcoming one's base nature. One grows by fully understanding we can all be evil.

By assigning all the blame to men and excuses to women, we disintegrate the boys and we create vapid girls.

If it were up to feminists, women would own all the good things and blame men for all the bad as they sail listlessly on a river of vapid compassion that lacks awareness of its own darkness.

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Submitted by bronxman on Mon, 2013-11-04 09:40

"always young men, who walk into movie theaters of places of worship with guns blazing"
That's because women tend to use poison rather than guns.

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Submitted by MrWombat on Tue, 2013-11-05 02:40