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Posted

I’ve hesitated to post this, but if people want to engage the topic honestly that would be great.

This Jacob Savage essay has gone viral this week and is having a major impact, particularly in right wing and libertarian online spaces. I would encourage those who want to comment here to read the essay before posting. 

The author suggests that efforts to diversify, while well intentioned had the effect of systematically excluding millennial men, and especially white millennial men from hiring and promotional opportunities in high status or culturally elite professional  fields from 2014 through recent times. In other words, that Gen X and Boomer men (almost universally white) got to keep their spots at the top, but millennial white men got frozen out. 

Predictably, this essay has been latched onto by online progressives and online MAGA to signal their respective audiences. For progressives, this means ridiculing the idea that white male privilege took a holiday (which is not what the essay says). For MAGA, this means banging the drum of racial grievance. Neither are responsive to the point, which rang true to me. 

I can’t speak for media, journalism or academia first hand, although it seems observationally true when I look at the compositions of staff. But I can say that it aligns with my experience and involvement in hiring and promotional decisions at global corporations and in tech beginning around 2008. I don’t think we thought about the generational component of what we were doing at the time, but looking back it’s clear to me that it had a significant impact, mostly without mitigating benefit. 
 

Posted
33 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I can’t speak for media, journalism or academia first hand, although it seems observationally true when I look at the compositions of staff.

I just finished the article and want to let it stew a bit, but since I baited you into making the thread I'll chime in about this.  

My wife works for a FAANG firm and showed me pictures from the Christmas party from the firm's headquarters in California and there are virtually no white male faces in the pictures (old or young).  I doubt it's because of DEI (it's preponderantly SE and E Asians that make up the attendees), but it does seem to align to an outcome that has the results described in the essay.  

That said, I think it's interesting that the author's seems to be overly focused on industries that are under a lot of employment stress to begin with.  Education, journalism, and film and tv production have all had a rough decade.  

FWIW, the talk in film circles is that Sundance has gotten swallowed whole by the representation and identity focused programmers, and it's kinda ruined their ability to help promote indie films.  

Posted
9 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

My wife works for a FAANG firm and showed me pictures from the Christmas party from the firm's headquarters in California and there are virtually no white male faces in the pictures (old or young).  I doubt it's because of DEI (it's preponderantly SE and E Asians that make up the attendees), but it does seem to align to an outcome that has the results described in the essay.  

Yeah I don’t think it’s about DEI, which has become sort of an HR catch-all term.
I think the basic thesis is that individual *millennial* white males (again, not GenX, not Boomers) were at a disadvantage without any real population level benefit to disenfranchised or marginalized people or change to the power structure.
That’s hard to disagree with from where I sit, and I can think of some pretty egregious examples. 
The funny thing is that at least based on what I saw during the period, it was a lot like affirmative action at elite universities.  At the individual level the people who benefited most were already quite privileged: usually affluent, well connected top university grads who were themselves the children of top university graduates. 
 

23 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

That said, I think it's interesting that the author's seems to be overly focused on industries that are under a lot of employment stress to begin with.  Education, journalism, and film and tv production have all had a rough decade

Indeed, I think he’s writing what he knows about. Plus media loves to talk about itself. 


 

 

Posted

Some of this is the danger of trying to make quick changes. When a company states of a goal of diversifying in say three-years rather than gradually, you're necessarily going to lock out others from the less favored pile. But there are some things in his statistics that still reek of privilege. For instance:

Quote

The white men shut out of the culture industries didn’t surge into other high-status fields. They didn’t suddenly flood advertising, law, or medicine, which are all less white and significantly less male than they were a decade ago. White men dropped from 31.2 percent of law school matriculants in 2016 to 25.7 percent in 2024. 

Non-Hispanic white men (whom I presume his article intends to address) only make up ~28% of the population.  I get that his point is that those in culture industries didn't move elsewhere, but he also seems to be implying this unfair effect his plaguing other industries too. I'm not convinced of that. I'll also note that he appears to be ignoring a pretty significant data issue: unknown race/ethnicity is common and prevalent choice in the data. And frankly many people that may be described as "white males" when looking at them may be claiming other ethnicities from their family background. I look white (mostly). But my grandmother was from China, and I often rotate between putting Asian, White, and prefer not to say on surveys. 

 

Posted

I also wish this analysis hadn’t been done on such a precious and prestigious and stressed field, as it’s led to some lazy and stupid takes: “poor white man thinks he’s entitled to a TV show” or “all the movies suck because of DEI hiring.” 
 

Factually: from about the mid-2010s peaking in the early 2020s I personally observed hiring and employment practices that were facially illegal and yet aby concerns were dismissed as “not relevant because we are prioritizing diversity.”
 

Eventually, the message was received, processes were changed to silently implement directions without the need for the facially illegal implementation. Specific examples from personal observation, across different orgs and industries. This is anecdotal, but not just one anecdote in one place. 

- Directions to “select the diverse candidate in the event of a tie,” while two diverse candidates in a tie would be given an additional interview or other screening before a final selection. On its face, a direction to use protected status as a hiring/promotion criteria.

- Senior leaders re-ranking short lists based solely on names (gender markers), without also reviewing any other parts of the files or notes. 

- Specific instructions that gay men should not be considered “diverse candidates” for the purpose of advancing DEI principles. 

- Specific instructions to “maintain a diverse balance” or “improve the diversity in the office” when multiple jobs came open.

- In academia, internal decisions by committees that a spot must be filled by a non-white male, with preference for non-white candidate. 
 

Here is the rub from my end: this happened in the absence of legislative changes and instead came down as a mandate to ignore existing EEO law in favor of a greater interest. And maybe, socially, that is the right call. But the net effect was a lot of double talk: “we don’t discriminate on the basis of race or sex, and when we do it’s for the right reasons. And this did lead to a well-founded suspicion that things were not what they were said to be and made it impossible to really measure impact in either a good or bad way. And I think naturally people tend to believe they got screwed and it colors decisions made in good faith as well.

Maybe society did need a few years of positive, re-balancing discrimination that proportionally disadvantaged a population that in earlier generations was privileged. But we didn’t ask that or discuss it or say we were doing it. We just tried (and failed) to gaslight everyone and pretend that we weren’t making important decisions about hiring and promotions based, in part, on race and gender.  And that lack of honesty is creating a lot of resentment. 
 

From my personal experience, the impact did fall mainly on millennial men at the beginning or early middle of their careers. The mandates and decisions were frequently passed down by established white men in leadership. 

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Posted

Still deciding whether or not to read the piece.  But from my perspective, if previous opportunities were only or primarily afforded to white males, and those opportunities suddenly (or even gradually) opened to others such that the makeup begins to look more like the general population, there is a price to be paid for that. 
 

is this a long form of 

image.thumb.jpeg.04557890bef941bc5cb24d71aa9effaf.jpeg

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Posted

for what it's worth, I'm in my mid-50s and have never run into people being told to not hire the white guy. What I actually notice is when companies frequently have non-white hires in lower paid divisions like call centers, while higher paid departments like Finance or Legal are mostly white. It's borderline awkward sometimes when I see mgmt teams get together across divisions and one mgmt team is all white and the other all black. It doesn't look to be a coincidence.

The writer of the article does point out that it probably does suck to attempt to work as a young white guy in some industries like entertainment, news or education. Those are all fields that want to pro-actively present themselves as non-discriminatory and I don't doubt that they limit or eliminate new white guys from entering. If I'm not mistaken, the Oscars require a certain amount of representation of previously marginalized groups in order to be eligible for awards.

Finally all people are fundamentally lazy. When there is a desire to be more diverse, I don't believe that it's a stated goal to hold back the previously non-diverse group. But the fastest way to be more diverse is to hold back white people especially white men. Therefore that scenario will most likely occur in some areas if not actively managed.

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Posted (edited)
37 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I also wish this analysis hadn’t been done on such a precious and prestigious and stressed field, as it’s led to some lazy and stupid takes: “poor white man thinks he’s entitled to a TV show” or “all the movies suck because of DEI hiring.” 

Just to be clear, I wasn't doing that. 

Quote

From my personal experience, the impact did fall mainly on millennial men at the beginning or early middle of their careers. The mandates and decisions were frequently passed down by established white men in leadership. 

One could see this as an attempt to lessen competition and protect their own status rather than a true belief in the values of diversity and inclusion. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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Posted
6 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Still deciding whether or not to read the piece.  But from my perspective, if previous opportunities were only or primarily afforded to white males, and those opportunities suddenly (or even gradually) opened to others such that the makeup begins to look more like the general population, there is a price to be paid for that. 
 

is this a long form of 

image.thumb.jpeg.04557890bef941bc5cb24d71aa9effaf.jpeg

It’s good, you should read it.  
 

Moreover, anyone wanting to see the US dig itself out of the MAGA size hole in our electorate needs to better understand any group’s sense of disenfranchisement, whether or not you agree with its justification.  

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Still deciding whether or not to read the piece.  But from my perspective, if previous opportunities were only or primarily afforded to white males, and those opportunities suddenly (or even gradually) opened to others such that the makeup begins to look more like the general population, there is a price to be paid for that. 
 

is this a long form of 

image.thumb.jpeg.04557890bef941bc5cb24d71aa9effaf.jpeg

The article is worth a read and makes some valid points, I think particularly for the industry it talks about. I think the problem stems from taking short cuts and trying to speed run into diversity through new hires. 

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Still deciding whether or not to read the piece.  But from my perspective, if previous opportunities were only or primarily afforded to white males, and those opportunities suddenly (or even gradually) opened to others such that the makeup begins to look more like the general population, there is a price to be paid for that. 
 

is this a long form of 

image.thumb.jpeg.04557890bef941bc5cb24d71aa9effaf.jpeg

put another way, when you are no longer allowed to get ahead by stepping on others and then pulling the ladder up when you get there, that can certainly feel like oppression. sounds like wypipo need some new bootstraps!

Posted (edited)

I won't say there's nothing to his point -- there is.  I think our society is failing males across the board in numerous ways, so white males are included.  But let's look at the statistical basis for his core complaint.

White males are 28-30% of the population.  He is lamenting the following things:

Quote

In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48 percent of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9 percent. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 percent male and 89 percent white in 2013 to 36 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024. White men fell from 39 percent of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18 percent in 2023. 

Let me summarize those numbers: for ever and ever, white males occupied a disproportionately HIGH percentage of slots in those fields.  Now they don't.  And that's wrong.  Oh, and my reasoning doesn't apply at all to the previous....decades/centuries of such statistically skewed favoritism of white males.  Nope.  I approach this like aggy, I only count the period of my choice (1984-1994, when aggy went 10-1).

But as for his point that the pendulum swinging hit his generation harder....yeah, he's not wrong.

But also, get the fuck in line.  I'm Gen-X.  The serial buttfucking we've received and will continue to receive from Boomers (and then, from the author's generation and Gen Z, because they are beginning to assert power and outnumber us) is epic and will continue to be).  Summary from Brisket: don't come bitching to me about your generation getting fucked.  Nope, shut the fuck up, I am going to tune your ass out because nobody ever has and nobody ever will give a fuck about our generation, so fuck off.

But also, he should feel very, very, very comforted, because we are now charging headlong into the golden age of "mediocre white men get all preferences over anyone else, regardless of merit," so take heart, millennials!  Your day is here!  Note that I am confident that you will NOT be bitching about the currently skewed hiring, political placements, etc. that is happening.  Nope, that's just returning to the mean - white male favoritism - that we never should have lost.

Oh, and as to the layer of "we've passed gender parity," yeah, I got bad news for him.  I've recruited and hired people in several fields (remember, I sit on some volunteer boards and have served in an HR capacity on some).  Our searches are sure as hell gender neutral.  In my experience, the quality of the candidate pool is NOT gender neutral.  Hate to break it to you fellas, but in the professional (non-technical) world, quality female candidates outnumber quality males probably 2-1 or better.  We still hire the best candidate we can get, but the law of averages alone tells us that said person is more likely to be female these days.  He is not looking inward at all on the QUALITY of white guy candidates these days.  Being bitter, entitled, often unlikeable, with poor social skills (online video games don't develop strong people skills) isn't a great look.  Be better, white dudes.  And note....I think there IS a broader social responsibility for this: our systems (educational, social, etc.) are failing males in general.

In summary: fuck 'em.  And I say this as the father of a boy who is essentially a Gen Z white male.  He knows and has had drilled into his head that he needs to set himself apart.  I don't see the author lamenting the fact that young black men have had to get similar lectures from their parents for decades -- you have to be perfect, you have to be the one who never says anything but "yes sir" and "no sir" to the cops, etc.  Poor me, waah waah waah.  Yeah, I know, having a bunch of pissed off young white guys isn't great for society, but fucking hell, zero personal responsibility or ownership of their fate.  Just shit that boils down to "I didn't get all the unfair advantages my predecessor generations had."  Nope, you didn't.  But you're getting them now, this admin is making sure of it.  And not a single one of you is even thinking to CONSIDER that the pendulum might be swinging too far back in THEIR direction.

Edited by Brisketexan
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Posted
23 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Just to be clear, I wasn't doing that. 

One could see this as an attempt to lessen competition and protect their own status rather than a true belief in the values of diversity and inclusion. 

I didn’t see your post as I was writing mine: I’ve been mostly referring to the terrible Twitter takes I’ve seen. 
 

And I agree with the second part, I think that an older generation saw an opportunity to get the credit for “fixing” diversity but letting the squeeze fall on someone else. 

Posted
4 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I didn’t see your post as I was writing mine: I’ve been mostly referring to the terrible Twitter takes I’ve seen. 
 

And I agree with the second part, I think that an older generation saw an opportunity to get the credit for “fixing” diversity but letting the squeeze fall on someone else. 

No question that there's been plenty of lazy execution in multiple places and instances.

But again, no worries, we've solved it.  We have not just banned any consideration of race or gender in even recruiting, we have implemented a system where hiring someone who is NOT a white male is per se evidence of discrimination against white males in favor of sub-standard minority and female candidates (because let's be honest....we all know that minorities and women are inherently substandard, amirite?)

"If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified."

"If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?"

That's where we are now, that's the governing social ethos, so the author doesn't need to worry his pretty little white head anymore.  He's won.  

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Posted
24 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I won't say there's nothing to his point -- there is.  I think our society is failing males across the board in numerous ways, so white males are included.  But let's look at the statistical basis for his core complaint.

White males are 28-30% of the population.  He is lamenting the following things:

Let me summarize those numbers: for ever and ever, white males occupied a disproportionately HIGH percentage of slots in those fields.  Now they don't.  And that's wrong.  Oh, and my reasoning doesn't apply at all to the previous....decades/centuries of such statistically skewed favoritism of white males.  Nope.  I approach this like aggy, I only count the period of my choice (1984-1994, when aggy went 10-1).

But as for his point that the pendulum swinging hit his generation harder....yeah, he's not wrong.

But also, get the fuck in line.  I'm Gen-X.  The serial buttfucking we've received and will continue to receive from Boomers (and then, from the author's generation and Gen Z, because they are beginning to assert power and outnumber us) is epic and will continue to be).  Summary from Brisket: don't come bitching to me about your generation getting fucked.  Nope, shut the fuck up, I am going to tune your ass out because nobody ever has and nobody ever will give a fuck about our generation, so fuck off.

But also, he should feel very, very, very comforted, because we are now charging headlong into the golden age of "mediocre white men get all preferences over anyone else, regardless of merit," so take heart, millennials!  Your day is here!  Note that I am confident that you will NOT be bitching about the currently skewed hiring, political placements, etc. that is happening.  Nope, that's just returning to the mean - white male favoritism - that we never should have lost.

Oh, and as to the layer of "we've passed gender parity," yeah, I got bad news for him.  I've recruited and hired people in several fields (remember, I sit on some volunteer boards and have served in an HR capacity on some).  Our searches are sure as hell gender neutral.  In my experience, the quality of the candidate pool is NOT gender neutral.  Hate to break it to you fellas, but in the professional (non-technical) world, quality female candidates outnumber quality males probably 2-1 or better.  We still hire the best candidate we can get, but the law of averages alone tells us that said person is more likely to be female these days.  He is not looking inward at all on the QUALITY of white guy candidates these days.  Being bitter, entitled, often unlikeable, with poor social skills (online video games don't develop strong people skills) isn't a great look.  Be better, white dudes.  And note....I think there IS a broader social responsibility for this: our systems (educational, social, etc.) are failing males in general.

In summary: fuck 'em.  And I say this as the father of a boy who is essentially a Gen Z white male.  He knows and has had drilled into his head that he needs to set himself apart.  I don't see the author lamenting the fact that young black men have had to get similar lectures from their parents for decades -- you have to be perfect, you have to be the one who never says anything but "yes sir" and "no sir" to the cops, etc.  Poor me, waah waah waah.  Yeah, I know, having a bunch of pissed off young white guys isn't great for society, but fucking hell, zero personal responsibility or ownership of their fate.  Just shit that boils down to "I didn't get all the unfair advantages my predecessor generations had."  Nope, you didn't.  But you're getting them now, this admin is making sure of it.  And not a single one of you is even thinking to CONSIDER that the pendulum might be swinging too far back in THEIR direction.

I started typing, and then said to myself, I said "self ... maybe if you wait a minute, Brisket will come along, say all the things you're trying to say, but better."

And there it is. Perfectly stated. 

Posted
Just now, capnamerca said:

I started typing, and then said to myself, I said "self ... maybe if you wait a minute, Brisket will come along, say all the things you're trying to say, but better."

And there it is. Perfectly stated. 

He talks real pretty don't he?

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Posted
44 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

From my personal experience, the impact did fall mainly on millennial men at the beginning or early middle of their careers. The mandates and decisions were frequently passed down by established white men in leadership. 

As a GenX man, I think that's largely true.  But it's also not something I'm going to apologize for.

As someone noted up-top, white men are only 28% of the population.  But as I look around my peer group, white men are waaaaaay more than 28% of the GenX lawyers in this town.  Or any town, for that matter.

At my firm at at others, we've tried to increase diversity among the firm's lawyers and within the profession more generally.  We haven't done anything illegal--we have a very good employment-law section that makes sure of that.  But we have done things like sponsor programs at UT and Houston-Tillotson that encourage undergrads who are from diverse backgrounds to consider the legal profession.  After all--it's real tough to hire a diverse workforce if all of the lawyers graduating law school are white.

And let's just be real clear--it makes good sense to have a diverse workforce.  Because we have a diverse client base.  And juries and judges are often not white men.*

I'll tell you--our current cadre of associates is still well more than 28% white men.  And the primary beneficiaries of a lot of those efforts in the legal profession have been white women, which doesn't really address all of the issues we were trying to deal with in our various DEI efforts.    But still--I'm not going to be too concerned about the fact that white males are slightly less over-represented in the legal profession than they used to be.

17 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Still deciding whether or not to read the piece.  But from my perspective, if previous opportunities were only or primarily afforded to white males, and those opportunities suddenly (or even gradually) opened to others such that the makeup begins to look more like the general population, there is a price to be paid for that. 

But the point is that it's a price that we--i.e., GenX males--didn't pay.

I think that maybe dovetails with the other thread on population reduction.  These decisions maybe hit a whole lot different when it's your sons that aren't getting the opportunities because of the decisions you're making.  But a lot of GenX males (and elder Millenial males) who are in positions of power don't have sons.  Or if they do have sons, they have one or two who are so well-off that they're not terribly concerned about them getting an entry-level position.

In the high-investment/low-number model of childbearing in which you have a small number of children in whom you invest a greater amount, do you really care if white males have relatively fewer opportunities if you're in the class of people who are making the decisions about DEI hiring?  Not really.  If you're in that class of people, your son(s)--you probably don't have more than one or two--are going to be very well educated.  They're ahead of the game, irrespective of who else is playing.

It's not that white male Millenials were handicapped.  It's that white male Millenials who didn't come from an upper-class background were handicapped.

 

 

 

 

* I have been in a number of CLEs with various women judges--some white, others not--in which those judges explicitly state that they prefer to hear from lawyers who "look like me."  The context is that they're encouraging us GenX white men to let our female (or female non-white) associates argue in court more frequently.  And I will tell you that there have been a number of hearings or appellate arguments in which I have sat there at counsel table and let a female colleague make the argument because I had heard that speech from that very judge.

On the one hand, I don't really care--I've had plenty of appellate oral arguments; I've argued dozens of summary-judgment motions.  They're no longer new or exciting.

On the other hand, I've had plenty of appellate oral arguments; I've argued dozens of summary-judgment motions.  So I have a lot more experience and can probably make a better presentation (particularly if it's going to require some on-the-fly improvization).  In a vacuum, the client might be better served to have me argue.  But in front of a judge who doesn't want to hear from someone who doesn't look like her, we have to make a different tactical decision.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

plenty of lazy execution in multiple places and instances.

This is the thing that makes me the most sad about (waves hands wildly around at everything). I don't for a second think that progressives have anything figured out perfectly. While we're certainly guilty of smelling our own farts on occasion, I do believe that there's an underlying ethos of continuous improvement in our desire to govern. There's a very real part of our government that would truly benefit from a traditional Conservative thumb on the scale, pushing back (the "did the pendulum swing too far" comments above). The R's have such a magnificient chance to make so many changes to so much policy, and shit, take a victory lap too for making things better for everyone. 

Education CLEARLY needs a ton of work.
Healthcare.
Energy Policy.
Inflation / Interest Rates.
Wages.

There is SO MUCH good that could be done by the party in power, to benefit so may people, and the Rs have 1) control of all three branches of government and 2) a series of pretty decent polices in place from D adminstrations to build off of. 

But no, it's more fun to hate brown people. 

Don't worry, I'm still fuckin' angry about all of it. But I'm so sad for the lost opportunity, too. 

4 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

He talks real pretty don't he?

Something something two dollar whore.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

 

But the point is that it's a price that we--i.e., GenX males--didn't pay.

I think that maybe dovetails with the other thread on population reduction.  These decisions maybe hit a whole lot different when it's your sons that aren't getting the opportunities because of the decisions you're making.  But a lot of GenX males (and elder Millenial males) who are in positions of power don't have sons.  Or if they do have sons, they have one or two who are so well-off that they're not terribly concerned about them getting an entry-level position.

In the high-investment/low-number model of childbearing in which you have a small number of children in whom you invest a greater amount, do you really care if white males have relatively fewer opportunities if you're in the class of people who are making the decisions about DEI hiring?  Not really.  If you're in that class of people, your son(s)--you probably don't have more than one or two--are going to be very well educated.  They're ahead of the game, irrespective of who else is playing.

It's not that white male Millenials were handicapped.  It's that white male Millenials who didn't come from an upper-class background were handicapped.

 

 

 

 

.

I honestly think I’d have a hard time finding a better explanation for why Trump has appeal to a new group of voters than this: 

“We (white men with power) benefited from an unfair system but we can balance the books in a way that protects us and further handicaps white people who didn’t have much power or an advantage to begin with.” 
 

“I love the poorly educated” indeed. 

Posted
55 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Still deciding whether or not to read the piece.  But from my perspective, if previous opportunities were only or primarily afforded to white males, and those opportunities suddenly (or even gradually) opened to others such that the makeup begins to look more like the general population, there is a price to be paid for that. 
 

And that's exactly the reaction I would expect from someone who doesn't read the essay



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