When I was in law school, there was a popular window sticker that you could buy at the bookstore. It read, simply, “Vanillanova.” Some thought it was a tongue-in-cheek commentary about the demographics of the university where, let’s be honest, most of the people of color were either foreign students or on the football fields and basketball courts. That’s not an insult or a criticism, that’s just fact.
I’m very proud of the education and experience I had with the Augustinians, but I’d be blind if I didn’t acknowledge how very different that experience was from the one that my brothers had at Temple, where they (and my father before them) got their law degrees. Suburban vs. urban, majority white vs. majority minority, culturally diverse vs. primarily from North Jersey.
Now, it is commonplace to have diverse races, religions and genders milling around in your immediate vicinity. Back in the dark ages of the 1980s, not so much. Which is why I found it ironic and strangely comforting to see that Esquire Magazine had put a young white boy on its cover. These days, that child is to society as the indigenous of Borneo were to Margaret Mead. In other words, the young white male is an endangered species struggling to survive in a changing habitat.
That probably upset you as much as Esquire’s cover photo angered the many readers who were outraged that the magazine would profile a fledgling member of the patriarchy. The reaction was swift and negative, with people like Jemele Hill tweeting sarcastically: “Because you know what we don’t discuss nearly enough? The white male experience.” Hill, you will remember, was the former ESPN anchor who got embroiled in the Colin Kaepernick controversy, so it isn’t surprising that she would be particularly sensitive about people paying attention to a young white boy during Black History Month. https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/1095292548665335808
Others seemed to think that we shouldn’t waste time worrying about the plight of the privileged, channeling the same sort of animus that made so many public figures tweet-libel the Covington Catholic crew. Apparently, we’re not supposed to worry about the bruised feelings and first world problems of people who were born with genetically engineered spoons in their mouths.
I’d like to say I was surprised at the pushback against a story that is timely, well-written and poignant. I wasn’t. Esquire took pains to show how difficult it was for white boys to navigate the currents of race, gender, class and history without crashing against some politically divisive shore. Years ago, Christina Hoff Somers wrote about “The War Against Boys” and the way that society was failing the brothers in order to rescue the sisters. It was a sobering reminder that the over-correction of the cultural pendulum can have real, dire consequences for children who bear no guilt and have no responsibility for being born on a specific side of the economic, cultural and genetic tracks.
It has only gotten worse since that book was published almost two decades ago. The Kavanaugh hearings proved that with a ferocity that took some people by surprise. The hatred shown toward men, and particularly young, educated, privileged, Christian men, was breathtaking. It may have been framed as an attempt to protect and advocate for women, but it ended up being night after night of slurs and suppositions and threats against a man who had the misfortune of growing up white and privileged at a time when minorities were finally finding their voices, and needed villains to act as a counterpoint to their own heroism. Kavanaugh looked like every young man who walked across the campus at “Vanillanova,” or who happened to be in my classroom at the Haverford School. He, and they, were caricatured and turned into symbols of oppression.
I would have thought that the Kavanaugh hearings had taught us a lesson in humility and compassion. But the dustup over the Esquire cover has shown me that there is still endless profit to be had in making fun of young white boys, and in diminishing their problems.
Fact is, the person most likely to take his own life is a white male. The people who are not entitled to defend themselves without being called smug and deserving of a “punch in the face” are young white males. The people who are most likely to suffer from depression are young white males.
Esquire had the right idea.
