Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era

One of the enduring images from the 2012 presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. Bellowing white men fill the talk-radio airwaves. Why are they so angry? Michael Kimmel has spent hundreds of hours in the company of these angry white men—from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students—in pursuit of an answer. Kimmel proposes a theory of aggrieved entitlement: a sense that the benefits to which white men long believed themselves entitled have been snatched from them.

Kimmel locates the increase in anger with a growing social, political, and economic gender gap, twinned with an ideology of masculinity that makes America's white men feel empty and alone. Although they have been facing years of underemployment and wage stagnation, mainstream American discourse rarely discuss class issues. So when America's white men feel they've lived their lives the "right" way—worked hard—and still do not get the rewards to which they believe they are entitled, then they have to blame somebody else. Anybody else.