It’s not fashionable. There’s a growing fixation on keeping up appearances of masculinity and it’s become a common identity. Education and mental health seem to be largely getting thrown out as non-masculine.
My son earned a business management degree and had a hard time finding a job. He had to work in a movie theatre as an assistant manager that didn't pay too well. He went to trade school and earned a CDL (Commercial Driver's License) for $5000 and now drives a truck for decent money.
A college degree can be expensive, and it does not guarantee a job, plus you have a huge student loan to pay off. That is why American Men think it is not worth it to go to college anymore.
It would've been helpful, but extremely gauche, if Bloomberg had said the quiet part out loud: this is a phenomenon for White American Men.
There are plenty of "minorities" with DEI potential going to college and succeeding in lofty goals. The pipeline is full of men and women alike, but many of our generation and the next ones are not enjoying success.
I feel this is a case of ethnic/tribal class decline. (Perhaps I am about to touch a Great Replacement third-rail!) Mental illness and homelessness and career troubles are plaguing people like me, and we can't quite put our finger on it, but the truth is that we find ourselves part of an outgroup, and the ingroups are jostling for position in society, and there's simply not enough elbow room for everyone.
I see a lot of White Men in similar situations who can salvage their lives if they go to a vocational school, and get into a decent and steady blue-collar job. That's assuming that they won't be plagued by mental illness or an inability to marry or have relationships. Guys can do alright for themselves with no college at all.
In pondering my own troubles, which involve all of the above and more, I'm confident in a few things: it's not my fault. Nothing I could've done would have reversed my fortune. And we need to wake up to this reality, that Living the American Dream and achieving more and more with each generation, these are not realistic goals for people like you and me.
This is a phenomenon for white American men because the American middle class happens to be majority white. Behind every “DEI hire” stands a mass of others who never made it as far as you expected to.
There is nothing to be gained from bitterness at being the last to rudely awaken from the American Dream.
From what I see, power/wealth in the US is still disproportionately held by white men. The balance may be shifting, but a slight reduction in privilege towards the average is not the same as becoming outgroup.
The shift parent is concerned with is perceived at the lower-middle, not at the top. People like Barbara Ehrenreich have noted the “fear of falling” in America for generations. Attitudes like this are what is seen when the fall actually happens.
> Mental illness and homelessness and career troubles are plaguing people like me,
The people who hoard all the money that's actually depriving you of stability have trained you with identity politics to think of these as issues that affect people "like you" rather than affecting everyone outside their top 1% in-group, regardless of identity.
I want to believe the old tale of the moral decline of black and brown America will lose its persuasive power once the rest realize they were never secure from the forces that effected it. I fear that they will not.
I don't want to sound too cynical but from European perspective I'd say just remove the horrendous costs of college and university by regulazing and subsidizing education. It's not communism even if many Americans would think so. But in order to get anywhere near there you'd probably have to start with replacing that orange toad and his minions with something else, anything really would do at this point
It’s not fashionable. There’s a growing fixation on keeping up appearances of masculinity and it’s become a common identity. Education and mental health seem to be largely getting thrown out as non-masculine.
https://archive.md/ZzU14
My son earned a business management degree and had a hard time finding a job. He had to work in a movie theatre as an assistant manager that didn't pay too well. He went to trade school and earned a CDL (Commercial Driver's License) for $5000 and now drives a truck for decent money.
A college degree can be expensive, and it does not guarantee a job, plus you have a huge student loan to pay off. That is why American Men think it is not worth it to go to college anymore.
It would've been helpful, but extremely gauche, if Bloomberg had said the quiet part out loud: this is a phenomenon for White American Men.
There are plenty of "minorities" with DEI potential going to college and succeeding in lofty goals. The pipeline is full of men and women alike, but many of our generation and the next ones are not enjoying success.
I feel this is a case of ethnic/tribal class decline. (Perhaps I am about to touch a Great Replacement third-rail!) Mental illness and homelessness and career troubles are plaguing people like me, and we can't quite put our finger on it, but the truth is that we find ourselves part of an outgroup, and the ingroups are jostling for position in society, and there's simply not enough elbow room for everyone.
I see a lot of White Men in similar situations who can salvage their lives if they go to a vocational school, and get into a decent and steady blue-collar job. That's assuming that they won't be plagued by mental illness or an inability to marry or have relationships. Guys can do alright for themselves with no college at all.
In pondering my own troubles, which involve all of the above and more, I'm confident in a few things: it's not my fault. Nothing I could've done would have reversed my fortune. And we need to wake up to this reality, that Living the American Dream and achieving more and more with each generation, these are not realistic goals for people like you and me.
This is a phenomenon for white American men because the American middle class happens to be majority white. Behind every “DEI hire” stands a mass of others who never made it as far as you expected to.
There is nothing to be gained from bitterness at being the last to rudely awaken from the American Dream.
Can you expand on what you mean by "outgroup"?
From what I see, power/wealth in the US is still disproportionately held by white men. The balance may be shifting, but a slight reduction in privilege towards the average is not the same as becoming outgroup.
The shift parent is concerned with is perceived at the lower-middle, not at the top. People like Barbara Ehrenreich have noted the “fear of falling” in America for generations. Attitudes like this are what is seen when the fall actually happens.
> Mental illness and homelessness and career troubles are plaguing people like me,
The people who hoard all the money that's actually depriving you of stability have trained you with identity politics to think of these as issues that affect people "like you" rather than affecting everyone outside their top 1% in-group, regardless of identity.
If you look at the statistics , the decline is even greater for Hispanic and black men
I want to believe the old tale of the moral decline of black and brown America will lose its persuasive power once the rest realize they were never secure from the forces that effected it. I fear that they will not.
[dead]
I don't want to sound too cynical but from European perspective I'd say just remove the horrendous costs of college and university by regulazing and subsidizing education. It's not communism even if many Americans would think so. But in order to get anywhere near there you'd probably have to start with replacing that orange toad and his minions with something else, anything really would do at this point