Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era
Kimmel believes it comes down to aggrieved entitlement: the school shootings perpetrated by middle-class white male students, the men’s-rights movement, white supremacists, the fathers’-rights groups, etc. There is, he elaborates, a strong (and getting dangerously stronger) feeling, among some white male Americans, that they are losing their place in society. The era of entitlement, when the good jobs and the best stuff was the white male American’s due, has passed, replaced by a society in which—at least in the skewed view of the people about whom Kimmel is writing—white males are being systematically marginalized, passed over in favor of minorities and women. (For example, the men’s-rights movement, the author says, is based on the belief that the oppression of men is a feminist conspiracy.) The angry white man, says Kimmel, isn’t able, or perhaps willing, to face the simple truth: the era of entitlement is over. The book offers no real solution to the problem, delivering instead a lively, frequently scary look at a group of people who are trying, ever more desperately, to hang onto a world that no longer exists. --David Pitt