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Notes -
Compact published a quite thorough analysis of the discrimination millennial white men have faced since the mid-2010s, focusing on the liberal arts and cultural sectors. It does a good job of illustrating the similar dynamics at play in fields including journalism, screenwriting, and academia, interviewing a number of men who found their careers either dead on arrival or stagnating due to their race and gender. It's a bit long, but quite normie-friendly, with plenty of stats to back up the personal anecdotes. It also does a good job of illustrating the generational dynamics at play, where older white men pulled the ladder up behind them, either for ideological reasons or as a defense mechanism to protect their own positions.
A great quote from near the end of the piece that sums it up:
Edit: typo
I agree with @FiveHourMarathon below. The reality is that many of the prime drivers of racial and gender affirmative action were old, largely white, men in positions of economic and in some cases political power in many of these institutions. There was some pressure around board seats or gender reporting, particularly in parts of Europe. But the majority was not forced.
There are two motives here, both obvious.
To a smart old man, a young, highly ambitious man is competition in a way a young, even highly ambitious woman is not. The woman probably won’t make it to the top; even today, when big law new hires are gender equal and have had many women for a long time, 75% of new partners are men. In finance, probably 75% of new managing directors this year are men, too, (apparently 73% at Goldman), more at some places. Race is an additional variable; because of longstanding stereotypes eg. about how personable Asian applicants are, or implicit beliefs in other details, Mr Editor in Chief might not see James Wong or James Chukwu as as much competition as James Williams or James Goldstein (and make no mistake, in publishing/media/film/arts, a lot of the ‘white men’ shut out over the past decade who would previously have found a place in the business were Jewish). The boss may well be wrong. But his belief is there nevertheless. Creative businesses are those in which youth is often prioritized; a senior director in advertising has seen 28 year old guys replace 55 year olds because they have better ideas, are younger, hotter, and cheaper, before.
The second motive is sex. Well, not necessarily sex, but men enjoy and have always enjoyed the company of pretty younger women. In 1975 you had to deal with the sweaty young men who worked for you because that was who the firm hired. In 2020 you could become ‘executive mentor’ to a bunch of pretty, 28-32 year old Asian, Indian and white women under the guise of “equity and inclusion” and be praised for it. What’s more, none of them had the chutzpah to book coffee with the head of division and pitch that they can do your job for half the pay.
An underhanded competition between old men in power and younger versions of themselves isn’t the only story of the woke era, but it is one of them.
I have thought on the hypothesis that Older males are acting in ways that inhibit up and coming young bucks because they instinctively(?) view them as competition for resources and, yes, mates that could unseat them from positions they very much feel they have earned and are entitled to keep.
Is it purposeful but maybe not 'intentional' behavior, throwing up obstacles for up-and-comers, giving them half-baked or outdated advice, and gleefully implementing social policies that systemically exclude such men under the veneer of 'equality', all in the name of keeping those possible competitors from threatening their current grasp on power.
I can think of multiple events in the Bible, for instance, where an older male in power seeks to inhibit or literally kill a younger upstart 'rival' to keep him from unseating him. You know why Saul wanted David (i.e. the dude who slew Goliath) dead? There was a literal prophesy that David would be king. And Saul wanted his son to be King. Even though his son liked David. Oh, keeping things relevant to the season, Jesus' birth caused King Herod to slay every single male under age two in Jerusalem for fear of being unseated decades later.
I could see this dynamic playing out writ large on the civilizational scale.
But there's little research on this point, and I don't think anyone has admitted to feeling this way or using this to guide their decisions, so I don't feel I can prove this with any strength.
Part of the evidence I've seen in favor of this hypothesis is that nepotism is still clearly a way to get ahead for white males. Note that I do not consider nepotism inherently a bad thing. That is, older men still clearly favor their progeny for advancement, they aren't throwing their own sons to the wolves... but it would then stand to reason that they are being much more suspicious of males they aren't related to and would feel fewer qualms about kicking out the ladder that those kids might use to advance.
Being a little bit petty, notice that Alexander Soros gets to be the heir apparent of his father's massive empire. The same father who has spent B-I-L-L-I-O-N-S of dollars implementing the exact policies and pushing the exact ideas that led to the issue the OP article identified.
It would stand to complete reason that George Soros might elevate a proud woman of color to take over his empire. But he chose his own male child, and said son, despite claiming to share his father's priorities, happily accepts. WHAT GIVES? (This is not an antisemetic dogwhistle, for those who have already instantly thought along those lines.)
So yeah, there's the real possibility this is all just an evolutionary arms race with the genes that favor their own kin implementing a cultural superweapon to generate an advantage in the great game of environmental fitness.
Just had to watch out for MeToo accusations. I noted that some evidence against my hypothesis is that older men were still getting sniped with being sex pests, and no matter how much power they had this was often enough to get them removed and unable to return to their former glory.
You can ascribe some of that to intra-elite competition.
Plenty of young dudes caught up in it as well, but if this were an 'intentional' play by older males to thin out the competition, it surely backfired on many of them, and hurt their overall ability to use their own power to procure sex from young women, which they certainly would not prefer to happen.
This likely also plays into the whole Epstein debacle, but I will leave that aside.
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