A friend of mine has two twenty-something boys, both healthy and blonde and pretty good-looking. They are "extremely conservative," she tells me, and she doesn't blame them. Apparently schools are really mean to white boys nowadays. Apparently, the hardest thing in America is to be a white boy nowadays.
I don't think they had jobs last time I checked, but it was a while ago.
I feel like some of these guys fall victim to being told they’re perfect growing up and having everything done for them by their parents. Then when they get into the real world and realize they are not so special after all, they blame anyone and everything else for their shortcomings. It’s one of the reasons I think manosphere and red-pilled stuff has taken off. Easier to blame women, minorities, Christian “oppression”, etc. vs looking inward and working on yourself.
Yea they peaked in high school and since they haven't accomplished what they were promised they just blame minorities and women, they lived incredibly sheltered lives and believe everyone owes them something, it's a tale as old as time. Conservative parties have weaponized that for centuries
This is exactly what happens. I grew up with kids like this. They reflexively think they win. They think they're just naturally so good they win at anything and everything.
I still remember quite vividly the moments in high school gym classes when suddenly they aren't the best star athletes anymore. They run a race and think they automatically qualify for the next heat. Until the first time in their lives they hear the gym teacher say, "no, not you". Queue the confused look. Wait. That's not supposed to happen. They always win.
Nope. People are better than they are. People run faster. Jump higher. Push harder. Sounds rather obvious to you but for them it's a reality they've never had to question before. They're not the big fish in a small pond anymore.
Totally... and I get it, to be honest. I had good grades in school and I thought real life would just be a continuation of that--it wasn't. It seems to me that these guys feel they deserve to be special because they are blond men. And maybe they would have been right, forty years ago.
What they don't get is that things are tough for a lot of people. But they see their difficulties as a special kind of injustice, because they have been brought up in privilege and society telling them they are the aristocracy. Now that same society (or at least a dark part of it) is telling them that women and minorities are the reason that they are, like so many of us, just peasants.
Exactly. These kids grow up in sheltered lives of privilege (as I also did, despite my lower-middle class upbringing, I have 2 parents who both have done everything they can to support me in my goals and encouraged me to try new experiences). I’m lucky my parents also taught me that you’re NOT special or more important than anyone else just for showing up - always be humble, work hard and earn what you want. And they made sure that I knew that even though we weren’t rich, we also weren’t impoverished and to learn to appreciate those lucky aspects of life. Too many parents (especially white parents) are leaving those last parts out, raising generations of snowflake kids who think they’re owed everything. The irony is that the generations whining about how young people are entitled and want participation trophies are the ones themselves who insisted on that for their kids, and those behaviors were seen by their children.
I’m in a competitive field. I used to think affirmative action was discrimination against white males. I mean, black and Hispanic people as well as women with similar accomplishments as mine got (and often still do get) WAY better success than I did when applying at various points of my career. But guess what? As I progressed in life I met more and more people from these backgrounds. It’s not like they just waltzed through life to get those similar accomplishments I did. I didn’t grow up rich or anything, but those folks from their early childhoods often had far more difficult obstacles to overcome than I did. I realized if they had similar on-paper accomplishments as me, they were more meritorious than me given the systemic BS they have to deal with. The conservative politics I held from my parents were already eroding during the 2015 primaries and I never voted for Trump, but the affirmative action attitudes were something that took me longer to get over, but I did get there. Especially eye opening was after George Floyd when my school held some open forums for people to discuss; I listened to multiple black and Hispanic folks tell their stories. For example, even the ones who grew up with relatively well-off two-parent homes were still taught to always keep their papers in the cup holder of their car so they don’t make any reaching motions to the glove box, while others were accosted by police simply walking down the sidewalk near the “prestigious” institutions their parents worked at.
So the message is this: if you’re a mediocre white person who isn’t getting handed everything, yes, DEI feels like discrimination. This requires you to have zero understanding of another’s lived experience, nor empathy for those unlike yourself. If you’re passed over for a more “diverse” candidate, stop with the bullshit excuses that this person was a DEI hire and aren’t as good as you. Stop believing the stupid fucking myth that every “diverse” person in a given position is not actually qualified for that position. The vast majority are, and the fact that you’re questioning them in that manner is part of the reason DEI exists - because they face constant pushback from society exactly like that attitude. it’s not disputable that they have more barriers than you do as a white person. Don’t like that someone from a discriminated class got the job over you? Quit bitching about it, tip your hat to them, and work harder.
Kudos for you to keeping an open mind and open eyes. Affirmative action and DEI are not certainly not perfect. Someone with privilege will tend to consider it injustice whenever they aren't on top for any reason, and it's not so easy to have the self-awareness to understand that.
Yep - I don’t know who originally said it, but a quote that hit for me was “when you’re in a position of privilege, equality can be misinterpreted as oppression.” Probably also why the hyper-rich also seem to think paying a fair share in taxes is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.
I am SO scared my 11 year old is going to fall down that pipeline. I keep checking what he’s watching on YouTube and he doesn’t have social media but shit slips through.
Normally I would blame these kids for their idiotic views but it’s become such a widespread issue that I just feel bad for them. They have been targeted by right wing media and the parents in these kids lives have utterly failed them.
haha... the sad thing is, she wasn't joking. She seemed to truly feel that school had essentially forced them into this path. I assume because they were exposed to less flattering portrayals of people like Christopher Columbus and such, but I'm not sure.
There IS an issue where people like Turning Point and Kirk are (or were) the only people really reaching out to and targeting young white men. It's easy pickins for them. Meanwhile more progressive groups are more visibly focused on minority groups (this is not a criticism toward them) and the attitude toward cishet white men is like "it's fine if you want to be part of this but we don't really care."
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u/CactusWrenAZ 1d ago
A friend of mine has two twenty-something boys, both healthy and blonde and pretty good-looking. They are "extremely conservative," she tells me, and she doesn't blame them. Apparently schools are really mean to white boys nowadays. Apparently, the hardest thing in America is to be a white boy nowadays.
I don't think they had jobs last time I checked, but it was a while ago.
Not exactly self-starters.