I mean, for me what I found so annoying about the debate was that critics of the essay constantly toggled back and forth between "no, that never happened, white men never faced any discrimination" and "of course white men faced discrimination, that's good, that's equality, that's how we heal the universe." A classic in the genre of "That's not happening, but that fact that it's happening is good."
Usually it involves several steps and a few weeks time, but they really speed ran the "It's not happening" to "It's happening and it's good" pipeline with this one.
Agree with you Freddie. See my comment on this about categorization and false dichotomies. We are in the era of foolish dichotomies, I think. I blame it on social media, of course.
There's a perception that this is limited to "prestige" careers, and technical professions are less effected. From my experience in engineering, this is not the case.
There aren't many women in engineering. What this means in practice is that women with very ordinary or even sub-par skill sets are heavily boosted. As an example, before a female co-worker was hired, I was already hearing how great she was from the hiring team, with the insinuation that her tech skills were better than mine. When she started working, I was assigned to help her with basic tasks such as tolerance stacks and the CAD system. By the time I left she was promoted to engineering manager (she quit within 2 months).
Women outside engineering are given a wide berth in meetings. If you find it necessary to disagree, you'd better have a diplomatic strategy planned out with the whole team in advance. A common strategy is talking over engineers, then when they attempt to interject, reminding them that a woman is talking.
If you look at big female led companies like GM, this is why they are struggling with design and quality problems. Conflict is an inherent part of problem solving, and the female approach abhors this.
Like you, I've left my original field, and it's been a change for the better.
Oh yeah, this is definitely a bigger issue in these type of fields. The institutions have to operate properly if anything is going to get done. There's not as much opportunity to "go your own way" for the hard sciences.
I'm glad to see your nuance here, Peter - that while white males are and have been getting screwed by society that there were still opportunities if one had only grabbed them (I have my fair share of failing to grab my own), and that it's unhealthy mentally to wallow in pity so too much focus on it is a bad thing (as an aside, most of the "whites" you list in those percentages are Jewish, unless broken out into their own category).
I further appreciated your stress on the importance of being able to freely express one's creative gifts without waiting for approval by institutional gatekeepers, even if it doesn't come with status or monetary rewards. With this attitude one may work a normal job, express oneself creatively with one's free time, and not become jaded or bitter from not being allowed advancement by others. Listening to the spirit within without external strings attached comes with its own rewards...
First of all: sir, you are a bigot, a fascist, a coward, and a cuck. With that out of the way...man this mirrors my own experience with academia. Reading that Savage piece was like drinking some forbidden ambrosia: "Yes, my failures are not my own! The system was stacked against me! None of the mistakes I made were my fault!" Dangerous stuff to partake of. I think your analysis--that it was definitely a thing, but that it doesn't excuse the wrong steps I took--is exactly correct. And weirdly, keeping that in mind keeps me from becoming bitter.
HA! Oh yeah it's easy to fall into all of that. It's still important to call this all out for what it was in a broader sense, but yeah you can't let it drag you down and impact you more than it already has. That's like letting it beat you twice.
Sure, we need to adapt to changes but I don't think do everything yourself, hope your video goes viral, spend time building your brand on the newest app,is a satisfactory. If someone wants to be a doctor or a woodworker or whatever they need mentors and working/learning opportunities. Ideally it should be similar for more creative work.
Very true. For creative work, I feel like that stuff is becoming more and more decentralized, much like everything else in those industries. So you might not develop a relationship with an editor at a publishing house, but you can develop one with another, more experienced writer who has navigated situations similar to the one you're in. Those people are out there, you just have to go find them.
Is this fair, or better than what came before? Not necessarily. It would be great if those types of patronage networks still existed. But unfortunately we have to play the cards we're dealt.
Very good, articulate, nuanced piece. Enjoyed it. I understand your point of view here. It is, as you say, important to retain personal agency. That's why every time I write about this topic I directly state, 'I don't think white men are victims.' And I genuinely don't. On the flip side, as you wrote yourself: Clearly there is some discrimination going on and has been for a while now. But I'm not going to go out there and 'demand my rights' or something. I'm gonna write my way on Substack, publish honest writing, work hard and try to succeed on my own terms.
Choosing not to indulge in blame and being honest with yourself about your abilities and failings is healthy for you as an individual. But I keep thinking of the people who responded to Savage by basically saying that his whole project and anyone who responded knowingly to it was just white male grievance. I appreciate that you've avoided that. But I also know that women and minorities were told for centuries that their failings were personal, when it was mostly the system. How do we balance the individual/system dynamic when it comes to white men?
I think you just need to be willing to sit with all the different component truths. This happened, it was wrong and shouldn't have happened, but there are/were ways to mitigate the damage.
Thank you for a thoughtful, humble, and civil essay. It's in short supply. I do identify with the quote from the professor. It is what I am doing.
I was born in the thick of the civil rights era. In my neighborhood, I could (and did) get denounced and bullied for publicly consorting with black children. I would be called a "n_____r lover." You could type the missing 4 letters without worry, by the way. You could say them fairly freely to anyone in my neighborhood or family and they mostly thought little of it. Hard times. Good riddance.
The thing that eats at me a little (as a boy from the 60s) in this whole debate is how freely and unapologetically we make sweeping and categorical statements, for or against, "cis white men" and other demographic groups. "Privileged" or "marginalized"--two sides of the same coin? What do we think of the many people who don't fit into that false dichotomy?
The thing that always sticks in my throat is that way that the categories are used almost always (he says, hedging) without hedging or qualifiers (some, many, often, etc.) It is a convenience, of course, to talk about groups, and a political necessity. But it bothers me.
In the case of the "lost generation" the category is used to target (for expulsion or non-entrance). Sometimes it's used in a way that drifts easily into casual bigotry: "You WOULD say that, white man." Or, worse, a strain of self-bigotry: "Well, you know, I'm just a stupid white man."
It tears us apart. It divides us the way those white boys divided me from the little black boys I wasn't supposed to play with. I know I must sound terribly naive, but I keep wanting people to hedge more, to allow the possibility that, by barring cis white men at the door of Disney, Inc.--with the worthy goal of balancing the scales of social justice--we lost something, too, some diversity of experience and viewpoint that audiences could really benefit from.
Don't ask me what I think we should do instead. I honestly am not sure. Maybe go the Confucian "middle way"? Hedge a little? Don't push quite so hard down on the scale on the marginalized side?
The refusal to acknowledge how these types of policies could be wrong or have negative downstream effects is what gets me. "Reaping? Why would I give a shit about that? This sowing stuff rules!"
Yes, and as I watch the protests in Minneapolis, I think, "What horrors are we sowing?" But everything is all or nothing in times like these.
When I say to a younger person "My God you have no idea how bad it used to be! Consider yourself blessed to have to put that "micro" in front of "aggression." In my neighborhood, they just beat the shit out of you if you came onto our block." (And I got the shit kicked out of me, too, if I crossed the line.
Now I can imagine someone out there thinking, "So you are FOR racism, then?"
I mean, for me what I found so annoying about the debate was that critics of the essay constantly toggled back and forth between "no, that never happened, white men never faced any discrimination" and "of course white men faced discrimination, that's good, that's equality, that's how we heal the universe." A classic in the genre of "That's not happening, but that fact that it's happening is good."
Usually it involves several steps and a few weeks time, but they really speed ran the "It's not happening" to "It's happening and it's good" pipeline with this one.
Agree with you Freddie. See my comment on this about categorization and false dichotomies. We are in the era of foolish dichotomies, I think. I blame it on social media, of course.
There's a perception that this is limited to "prestige" careers, and technical professions are less effected. From my experience in engineering, this is not the case.
There aren't many women in engineering. What this means in practice is that women with very ordinary or even sub-par skill sets are heavily boosted. As an example, before a female co-worker was hired, I was already hearing how great she was from the hiring team, with the insinuation that her tech skills were better than mine. When she started working, I was assigned to help her with basic tasks such as tolerance stacks and the CAD system. By the time I left she was promoted to engineering manager (she quit within 2 months).
Women outside engineering are given a wide berth in meetings. If you find it necessary to disagree, you'd better have a diplomatic strategy planned out with the whole team in advance. A common strategy is talking over engineers, then when they attempt to interject, reminding them that a woman is talking.
If you look at big female led companies like GM, this is why they are struggling with design and quality problems. Conflict is an inherent part of problem solving, and the female approach abhors this.
Like you, I've left my original field, and it's been a change for the better.
Oh yeah, this is definitely a bigger issue in these type of fields. The institutions have to operate properly if anything is going to get done. There's not as much opportunity to "go your own way" for the hard sciences.
I'm glad to see your nuance here, Peter - that while white males are and have been getting screwed by society that there were still opportunities if one had only grabbed them (I have my fair share of failing to grab my own), and that it's unhealthy mentally to wallow in pity so too much focus on it is a bad thing (as an aside, most of the "whites" you list in those percentages are Jewish, unless broken out into their own category).
I further appreciated your stress on the importance of being able to freely express one's creative gifts without waiting for approval by institutional gatekeepers, even if it doesn't come with status or monetary rewards. With this attitude one may work a normal job, express oneself creatively with one's free time, and not become jaded or bitter from not being allowed advancement by others. Listening to the spirit within without external strings attached comes with its own rewards...
I'm living it every day! Not as glamorous of a lifestyle as my peers who made careers for themselves in comedy, but it has its perks.
First of all: sir, you are a bigot, a fascist, a coward, and a cuck. With that out of the way...man this mirrors my own experience with academia. Reading that Savage piece was like drinking some forbidden ambrosia: "Yes, my failures are not my own! The system was stacked against me! None of the mistakes I made were my fault!" Dangerous stuff to partake of. I think your analysis--that it was definitely a thing, but that it doesn't excuse the wrong steps I took--is exactly correct. And weirdly, keeping that in mind keeps me from becoming bitter.
HA! Oh yeah it's easy to fall into all of that. It's still important to call this all out for what it was in a broader sense, but yeah you can't let it drag you down and impact you more than it already has. That's like letting it beat you twice.
Sure, we need to adapt to changes but I don't think do everything yourself, hope your video goes viral, spend time building your brand on the newest app,is a satisfactory. If someone wants to be a doctor or a woodworker or whatever they need mentors and working/learning opportunities. Ideally it should be similar for more creative work.
Very true. For creative work, I feel like that stuff is becoming more and more decentralized, much like everything else in those industries. So you might not develop a relationship with an editor at a publishing house, but you can develop one with another, more experienced writer who has navigated situations similar to the one you're in. Those people are out there, you just have to go find them.
Is this fair, or better than what came before? Not necessarily. It would be great if those types of patronage networks still existed. But unfortunately we have to play the cards we're dealt.
Very good, articulate, nuanced piece. Enjoyed it. I understand your point of view here. It is, as you say, important to retain personal agency. That's why every time I write about this topic I directly state, 'I don't think white men are victims.' And I genuinely don't. On the flip side, as you wrote yourself: Clearly there is some discrimination going on and has been for a while now. But I'm not going to go out there and 'demand my rights' or something. I'm gonna write my way on Substack, publish honest writing, work hard and try to succeed on my own terms.
I do have an instinct to complain and chimp out more, but it just doesn't feel like the right move for me personally. Just a gut reaction.
Choosing not to indulge in blame and being honest with yourself about your abilities and failings is healthy for you as an individual. But I keep thinking of the people who responded to Savage by basically saying that his whole project and anyone who responded knowingly to it was just white male grievance. I appreciate that you've avoided that. But I also know that women and minorities were told for centuries that their failings were personal, when it was mostly the system. How do we balance the individual/system dynamic when it comes to white men?
I think you just need to be willing to sit with all the different component truths. This happened, it was wrong and shouldn't have happened, but there are/were ways to mitigate the damage.
Solid piece. Thanks for opening up about it all.
Thanks! Keep fighting the good comedy fight out there.
Thank you for a thoughtful, humble, and civil essay. It's in short supply. I do identify with the quote from the professor. It is what I am doing.
I was born in the thick of the civil rights era. In my neighborhood, I could (and did) get denounced and bullied for publicly consorting with black children. I would be called a "n_____r lover." You could type the missing 4 letters without worry, by the way. You could say them fairly freely to anyone in my neighborhood or family and they mostly thought little of it. Hard times. Good riddance.
The thing that eats at me a little (as a boy from the 60s) in this whole debate is how freely and unapologetically we make sweeping and categorical statements, for or against, "cis white men" and other demographic groups. "Privileged" or "marginalized"--two sides of the same coin? What do we think of the many people who don't fit into that false dichotomy?
The thing that always sticks in my throat is that way that the categories are used almost always (he says, hedging) without hedging or qualifiers (some, many, often, etc.) It is a convenience, of course, to talk about groups, and a political necessity. But it bothers me.
In the case of the "lost generation" the category is used to target (for expulsion or non-entrance). Sometimes it's used in a way that drifts easily into casual bigotry: "You WOULD say that, white man." Or, worse, a strain of self-bigotry: "Well, you know, I'm just a stupid white man."
It tears us apart. It divides us the way those white boys divided me from the little black boys I wasn't supposed to play with. I know I must sound terribly naive, but I keep wanting people to hedge more, to allow the possibility that, by barring cis white men at the door of Disney, Inc.--with the worthy goal of balancing the scales of social justice--we lost something, too, some diversity of experience and viewpoint that audiences could really benefit from.
Don't ask me what I think we should do instead. I honestly am not sure. Maybe go the Confucian "middle way"? Hedge a little? Don't push quite so hard down on the scale on the marginalized side?
The refusal to acknowledge how these types of policies could be wrong or have negative downstream effects is what gets me. "Reaping? Why would I give a shit about that? This sowing stuff rules!"
Yes, and as I watch the protests in Minneapolis, I think, "What horrors are we sowing?" But everything is all or nothing in times like these.
When I say to a younger person "My God you have no idea how bad it used to be! Consider yourself blessed to have to put that "micro" in front of "aggression." In my neighborhood, they just beat the shit out of you if you came onto our block." (And I got the shit kicked out of me, too, if I crossed the line.
Now I can imagine someone out there thinking, "So you are FOR racism, then?"