October 03, 2008

Why white men hate Indians

Dude, where's my manhood?

A new book looks at American masculinity and the dangers posed by disgruntled guys.Kimmel pinpoints the cause of young white male frustration in another typically pithy coinage: "thwarted entitlement." You might call this phenomenon the blowback of the civil rights and women's and gay liberation movements, an ever-growing sense among young white males that women and minorities have snatched away the jobs and social positions that their fathers and grandfathers implied they could take for granted. Sure, it's hard for minorities to feel sympathy for white guys who seem to believe in personal responsibility when it comes to poverty yet claim that women and people of color are taking their jobs--but they may do so at their peril. When large swaths of young men feel disenfranchised, violence is usually in the offing. If the guys Kimmel studies suddenly lost the ability to sponge off their parents, he implies, the effects of "thwarted entitlement" could easily spread out beyond the bad apples and erupt into various forms of chaos.

For Kimmel, dismissing rough stuff like bullying, porn addiction, hazing, binge drinking, hooliganism, gay-bashing and date rape as typical male behavior, or accepting that "boys will be boys," makes you an accomplice to Guyland's evils. While it seems obvious that these behaviors are unacceptable when they happen in other communities, Kimmel cites many cases in which those directly involved look away--including the community in Mepham, Long Island, who in 2004 leapt to the defense of a football team whose hazing process included sodomizing frosh players with "pine cones, broom handles, and golf balls ... coated with [Ben-Gay equivalent] Mineral Ice"; or the guys in Glen Ridge, N.J., who infamously snuck away when their fellow athletes gang-raped a "slightly retarded" girl in a basement, but never notified authorities, and refused to betray their teammates once the scandal broke.
Comment:  You can just imagine what these men-children think of Indians. They love to gamble and party in their casinos, but resent tribes for having sovereignty and "special" rights. They love their mascots and stereotypical depictions of Indians (South Park, Family Guy, etc.) but think real Indians are drunks and lazy bums. They love to make crude, racist comments, but call you PC when you point that out.

In addition to date rape and gay-bashing, these people undoubtedly are responsible for many of the attacks on Latinos, Muslims, and Indians. And they're also the disturbed individuals who shoot up schools like Columbine and Virginia Tech when they don't get their way. All these factors are tied up in their sense of "thwarted entitlement"--the notion that they're not benefiting as much from white privilege as they used to.

For more on the subject, see Why White Boys Keep Shooting.

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