Dem
47
GOP
53
Washington Post Republican columnist Megan McArdle has yet another idea about why young men voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Although it is very politically incorrect, there is certainly at least a kernel of truth in it, although that almost doesn't matter. What matters is that young men think it is true and act accordingly.
For years, at many companies, universities, and other employers, there has been a (sometimes explicit) hiring preference for anyone but straight white men. Maybe this is fair on account of historical discrimination, but that whether it is fair is beside the point. Many organizations have a policy, or at least a habit, of giving priority in hiring to women and minorities, which makes it more difficult for young straight white men to get jobs which would give them the skills necessary to get hired, so it is vicious circle. The young straight white men see this as explicit discrimination against straight white men and they are not interested in hearing that their father and grandfather and great-grandfather benefited from being straight white men. And they get to vote. That's the problem (for the Democrats).
There are data to back this up. For example, in 2011, white men were 48% of lower-level TV writers. In 2024, it was 12%. The Atlantic's editorial staff went from 53% male and 89% white in 2013 to 36% male and 66% white in 2024. White men fell from 39% of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18% in 2023. There are plenty more examples. Again, the issue is not whether this is fair or good public policy. The point here is to explain why young white men voted as they did in 2024. They feel there is discrimination against them because they are white men. They feel the world is rooting for them to lose.
For Boomer and Gen-X white men, who have plenty of experience and can win employment battles based on their experience, this seemed only fair. But they weren't taking the brunt of DEI policies. Young white men were. And they resented it and voted for the guy who promised to kill DEI. Of the many articles written about the voting patterns in 2024, not many look at it from a "white cohort" point of view.
By 2019, many newsrooms had already reached gender parity. The newsrooms at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, ProPublica, The Huffington Post, Vice, and Vox were already majority-female by then. Yet a policy design to correct gender imbalance that no longer existed was kept in place.
After George Floyd was killed in 2020, the wheels came off. Newsrooms rushed to hire more Black staffers. In 2021, new hires at Condé Nast were 25% male and 49% white. At The Los Angeles Times, and San Diego Union-Tribune they were 39% male and 31% white. At ProPublica, 58% of new hires were people of color. It is still going on. In 2024, at The Atlantic, 69% of new hires were people of color. At NPR the figure was 78%. In 2022, a quarter of college graduates were white men, so one might expect that in elite professions about a quarter of the new hires would be white men. In reality, it is way below that. The articles cited above go on and on with numbers. Suddenly, hiring was driven heavily by identity politics and young white men were at the bottom of the food chain. Older white men with plenty of experience were not affected so much.
In academia, the same pattern held. Among tenured faculty, white men still dominated total employment because many were hired years ago and by now had lots of experience. But for recent Ph.D.'s applying for entry-level jobs, being a white man was very nearly the kiss of death. In tech companies, a similar effect was observed. Is it then surprising that the shift in 2024 was young men moving to the right but older men not doing so? The latter weren't on the front lines.
In certain areas, getting the desired balance is easy, In others it is not. If a college admits exactly the desired demographic mix it wants for 4 years in a row, presto, the student body is now exactly as the administration wants it to be. But in a company with employees who have been around for 20, 30, or 40 years, hired decades ago and who can't easily be fired because they are doing their work as expected, hiring the "right" mix of people every year will take decades to make the whole company right. The only way to speed it up is to do what NPR did, make 78% of new hires people of color.
McArdle's case is not watertight. Young Black men voted for Trump even though being Black gets you bonus points these days. Maybe because the DEI stuff is more for elite occupations and Black Americans are underrepresented in colleges and thus less focused on elite jobs. Noteworthy, young Black women did not shift, possibly because they get double bonus points. Also, what role does "macho" play here and does that affect men and women differently? In any event, the shift among young voters did occur. The question is: Why? Examining the impact of DEI is probably an area that needs more attention. (V)