The Washington Post story by Christine Emba has received so much attention, with interviews on MSNBC, CNN, etc. in the last week, that it deserves some response. The story was weirdly positioned on the WashPost’s home page next to multiple stories on Barbie dolls, Barbie makeovers, and her complicated relationship with Ken (they are dolls, they have no relationship).
Its horrible title is “Men are lost: here’s a map out of the wilderness.” And its reciting of invectives against men are so numerous and derogatory, no one could use any of those words to describe women without losing their job.
Three Good Connections
While clearly in her own wilderness and no map is ever provided, Emba makes some interesting connections on her way to false conclusions and a startling conclusion.
1. Root of the problem
Emba rightly sees the root of the problem in the downward mobility and economic debtor’s prison boys and men with only a high school degree find themselves in the Knowledge Society of this century, where a college education is a prerequisite to a decent middle class lifestyle.
She guesses wildly about peacetime and free trade, but among her guesses she includes ‘deindustrialization,’ which is correct.
2. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers
Yes, there is a direct connection between the economic problem of men with a high school degree and the dramatic rise of the insurrectionists. Aside from the leader from Harvard, we can assume (no data is provided) that the great majority of these angry white men have only a high school degree.
3.Death by Despair
Undoubtedly, Emba is correct in including as a consequence of the economic problem of men with a high school degree the 50,000 young men, too many in their thirties, who die by what the CDC has rightly named ‘death by despair.’
We Experience These Connections
I can testify to the accuracy of the above three points.
- We live in a rural low-income county where young men have little or no future beyond minimum-type pay.
- I am surrounded by the angry white men that are, or support, or sympathize with those angry men who go too far. One of the billionaires who indirectly (or not) funded Jan 6 lives here.
- And our boys have been to more funerals than I can count. One of our boys collects the ashes from his deceased friends. He has quite a collection.
So Emba has, maybe for the first time in national media, made three good connections that ought to receive attention. That’s where the reality of her analysis ends.
Education the Solution
While occasionally hinting at the solution, a college education for smart deserving males, Emba has drunk the Kool-Aid in stating that boys “feel emasculated their female classmates are doing so well.” No, not emasculated, angry. Boys know they are being discriminated against in school, college and even graduate school. They know they are as smart as girls, test just as high as girls, are praised in the military, and do great in the workplace.
Emba points to the data and all-too-obvious signs that males are being discriminated against, in violation of Title IX, in grading. But whether scared, or a data denier herself, for some reason she cannot get out of her wilderness.
Christine Emba, however, does end on a surprising note that Betty Friedan and all of us would heartily endorse, “In the end, the sexes rise and fall together.”
William A. Draves is a member of the Boys Initiative Board of Advisors and is co-author with Julie Coates of Smart Boys, Bad Grades: Gender Inequality and STEM in Education.