You were born a white man and an American, so you have the right to get admitted to the best universities of your country in the first place, over women and colored people. You have the right to get the best job and the highest salary. Your wife looks up to you, your children are always polite and obedient – they should be, because if they are not, they will pay for it dearly. You are always the boss. This is fair; this is how it always should be.
But hey, what is going on? At first an Asian gets admitted to the university you’ve chosen for yourself in front of you and thus you have to find another college to apply to. Then a woman – goddamned woman, for the Christ’s sake – is chosen over you when getting a promotion. And guess what? Your President is black!
But you are the white man! How dare they to take your rights for you, your rights of superiority? All these women and colored people – how dare they declare equality? The rich men – how dare they to be more successful, than you? You have to get back at them…
…Michael Kimmel in his book “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era” explores the phenomenon of the rage of middle- and lower-middle class white men towards the terms of modern reality. He calls it “aggrieved entitlement”. The problem is that white men were raised to believe that everything in the world belongs to them just because they were lucky enough to be born white and male. Unfortunately for them, their “superior rights” are gone, along with many unfair traditions and customs.
Nowadays Angry White Men are glancing behind, hoping for the world of the past to become the world of the future. Oh, if they could they would bring everything back. They long for their lost unlimited power over women, blacks, gays, immigrants. They – all of these activists from “men’s rights” organizations and from “white wing” fractions – want to feel themselves important, more important, than anyone else on the planet.
But it is impossible to make the USA go back to where they started. The society does not belong to white men alone any longer. And the only way for them to regain their dignity is to learn to share. They have to accept the fact, that there are other people, of another gender, with another skin color, who have the right to own this world. Michael Kimmel tries to explain it in his book – but do angry men ever listen to the voice of common sense?..
