When leftists want to eliminate something that challenges left-wing orthodoxy, they don't engage in dialogue or debate. They simply try to dismiss it, as the Manhattan Institute senior fellow Rob Henderson pointed out a few years ago.
Step 1: It's not really happening
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) June 14, 2021
Step 2: Yeah, it's happening, but it's not a big deal
Step 3: It's a good thing, actually
Step 4: People freaking out about it are the real problem
We need to keep this intellectual progression by progressives in mind when examining what has happened to millennial white men in the last 10 years.
Discrimination in employment is illegal in the United States. It has been for more than 60 years, ever since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made employment discrimination illegal based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. That law was aimed at employers who hired white, male, straight Christians when other worthy candidates, equally qualified, who were minorities or women, were turned down.
Since then, the interpretation of that law has radically changed. In fact, the law now encourages discrimination in favor of "extra consideration" for women, minorities, and other protected classes. That "extra consideration" has led to the systemic exclusion of white male millennials from employment in prestigious cultural fields such as media, publishing, and academia.
A viral article by Jacob Savage in the online magazine Compact makes a strong case that the discrimination is not only illegal but deliberate and systematic.
In 2011, Savage writes, white males occupied 48% of lower-level TV-writing positions; in 2024, they filled 12 percent. In academia, out of 45 tenure-track hires in the humanities and social sciences at Brown University since 2022, he says, just three have been white American men.
What does the left have to say about that and numerous other examples that Savage listed?
Despite the extensive figures that Savage cites, prominent voices on the left found ways to reject or decry his argument. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur fellow and the reporter behind The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” wrote on Bluesky that the essay is statistically dubious and confirms “a deeply held grievance amongst an apparently large % of our white colleagues that they are the victims of rampant discrimination.” The writer Moira Donegan, who created the “S****y Media Men” list and was forced to pay a settlement to a man who sued her for defamation, posted in response to the Compact article: “Really kind of dispiriting to realize how many men in my world see the women and people of color in their lives as thieves and obstacles to their thriving.”
The Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton Williams writes of his personal experience with DEI "gatekeepers."
"The gatekeeping apparatus that he identifies is real, but it often serves a specific subset of marginalized groups," Williams writes. "Gender and race were not the only characteristics that determined who captured the cultural and economic windfall that wokeness wrought. Ideology played an outsize role too."
Indeed, not every black person or woman was deemed more employable than a white male. Only black or female candidates who demonstrated the proper adherence to progressive values and the progressive agenda were deemed worthy.
These gatekeepers have typically favored women or members of racial minorities, but only those equipped with a prix-fixe menu of progressive values and beliefs. Many of these favored candidates spoke in esoteric codes and espoused beliefs that put them at odds with the majorities of their respective ethnic and gender cohorts, as polling on progressive shibboleths such as police abolition, pronoun innovations, and jargon like Latinx has consistently shown. Some white candidates speak this way too. As one source said to Savage, they adopt “a kind of protective coloration, allyship mindset, to get through the door.” These applicants were likely in a far stronger position to thrive in DEI-driven institutions than the minorities who checked the right identity boxes but contradicted the prevailing orthodoxy of the post-2014 era.
Orwell had a name for this kind of "ally mindset": "Bellyfeel." This was a person who had adopted the mindset. It implies a blind, enthusiastic, and literal acceptance of an idea or dogma without any intellectual questioning.
Savage's article is hard for the left to refute. They have to fall back on their "four-step dismissal" of Savage's thesis. Not that it's going to change anything. Millennial males will still suffer discrimination. That they've largely kept their silence is a testament to the left's thorough job of browbeating and shaming millennial white males by making them feel guilty about who they are.
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