White men kept out of Hollywood, academia as older gatekeepers saved jobs for themselves and DEI cohorts

The reasons behind the exclusionary practices were all based in the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion—DEI. That concept, when applied to hiring, admissions, and opportunities, has meant that some identities are prioritized for advancement over that of white maleness, or male whiteness, and merit has not been the driving factor for promotion in many industries.

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Hiring managers, bosses, and gatekeepers all knew what was up in the mid-2000s through the present day; they were expected to "diversify," and so that meant excluding people who didn't check the right boxes. Those right boxes could be anything except white male.

The idea was that white men already had too much. They had the jobs as Hollywood showrunners, they had the jobs as tenured professors, they were nominated for all the awards at the 2013 Oscars and got all the MacArthur Awards, so wasn't it time to give someone else a shot?

But in practice, so-called diversity hiring became a de facto set of discriminatory principles against the group that everyone feels good about hating: white men. "In industry after industry, gatekeepers promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn’t a white man—and then provided just that," writes Jacob Savage in Compact.

For Savage, the story isn't just about the professional position against white men, but about the older white men who were entrenched in their careers and saw no reason to help their younger cohort as they tried to make their way in life and work. These men, he asserts, kept their own jobs while keeping younger white men out of those positions lower down on the totem pole.

"This isn’t a story about all white men," Savage goes on to say. "It’s a story about white male millennials in professional America, about those who stayed, and who (mostly) stayed quiet...Because the mandates to diversify didn’t fall on older white men, who in many cases still wield enormous power: They landed on us."

Some of those who tried their luck in Hollywood only to be dealt a losing hand due in part to DEI mandates moved into new media, albeit on the left, and found a little room there until DEI came knocking at those doors too. Would-be academics just stopped trying to land those professorships that would lead to a tenure track and a cushy academic existence.

Still others put off marrying, having children, setting up a stable life in some other field, because they were hoping against hope that their ship would come in and they'd be able to land a seat in a writers' room, running their own show, or selling feature scripts. For those in Savage's write-up, that did not happen. None of them "made it."

"Making it" in Hollywood, or on Broadway, is an elusive, dangerous dream at best. As the old saw goes, in entertainment like that, you can make a killing, but you can't make a living. And once the deck is stacked against a person not for talent or merit but for immutable characteristics like race or sex, the dream of a killing is out the window.

And the questions mount, as Savage writes: "Is the media more trusted now than a decade ago? Is Hollywood making better films and television? Is academia more respected? Have these institutions become stronger since they systematically excluded an entire cohort—or did abandoning meritocracy accelerate their decline?"

The change, as Savage notes, began well before the George Floyd-inspired anti-racism tirades of 2020, but really kicked into high gear at that point. No one wanted white men anywhere, if they could help it. Not in medicine, academics, arts, institutions, and so these white men, who had been ubiquitous, industrious, stopped applying.

The white men dropped out of trying, they stopped showing up. They went and got straight jobs in industries that weren't obsessed with race and trudged on through life. As Savage notes at the end of his engaging piece, he's "mostly annoyed" at himself.

Instead of proposing to his lady, making a life for himself, he "spent a decade insisting the world treat [him] fairly, when the world was telling [him] loudly it had no intention of doing so." He let himself be guided by dream and not reality.

This, too, is a Millennial and Gen X conundrum. Those generations were told explicitly by parents, educators to follow their passion. That passion led them onto career paths that had no guarantees of panning out. When the rules changed and identity factors came into play, those who entered the workforce in and after the 2008 financial crisis were left out.

"I could have worked harder," Savage writes, "I could have networked better, I could have been better. The truth is, I’m not some extraordinary talent who was passed over; I’m an ordinary talent—and in ordinary times that would have been enough."

It's true that not everyone is going to make it in the career they embark upon, not everyone is going to make it in life, for factors both related and unrelated to their choices. But gatekeepers should not artificially set the terms, not by race, sex, or political perspective, as a means to keep some out and some in, no matter how good it makes them feel to do it.