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ANGRY WHITE MEN
AMERICAN
MASC ULINITY
AT
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E ND OF
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MICHAEL
KIMMEL
ANGRY WHITE MEN M
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“[W]e can’t come off as a bunch of angry white men.”
Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party
O ne of the enduring legacies of the 2012 presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the
winner, a distressed Bill O’Reilly lamented that he didn’t live in
“a traditional America anymore.” He was joined by others who
bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional
redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry? Sociologist
Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and
masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in
the company of America’s angry white men—from men’s rights
activists to young students to white supremacists—in pursuit of
an answer. Angry White Men presents a comprehensive diagnosis
of their fears, anxieties, and rage.
Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic
economic, social, and political shifts that have so transformed
the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial
and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic
ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and
bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic
privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls
“aggrieved entitlement”: a sense that those benefi ts that white
men believed were their due have been snatched away from them.
Angry White Men discusses, among others, the sons of small
town America, scarred by underemployment and wage stagnation.
When America’s white men feel they’ve lived their lives the “right”
way—worked hard and stayed out of trouble—and still do not get
economic rewards, then they have to blame somebody else. Even
more terrifying is the phenomenon of angry young boys. School
shootings in the United States are not just the work of “misguided
youth” or “troubled teens”—they’re all committed by boys. These
alienated young men are transformed into mass murderers by a
sense that using violence against others is their right.
(continued on back fl ap)
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