At a graduation ceremony, I visited with middle-aged men of my acquaintance, and found many of them — maybe even a majority — living like me without steady work. When I talked about it a little, they readily admitted they were hurting. Taking construction jobs for a $100 under the table, despite having careers in the media, for instance. A journalist friend pointed me to this Newsweek cover story on the phenomenon, which does bring out some new details, and makes its case powerfully:
…while economists don’t have fine-grain data on the number of these [middle-aged] men who are jobless—many, being men, would rather not admit to it—by all indications this hitherto privileged demo isn’t just on its knees, it’s flat on its face. Maybe permanently. Once college-educated workers hit 45, notes a post on the professional-finance blog Calculated Risk, “if they lose their job, they are toast.”
The chart below is based on a survey of 250 such "beached white males" around the country.
Kit Stolz 
I’m sorry guys… Why do I not feel sad about this? Maybe because after 1500 years of white male domination in America, it’s time give someone else a chance to be on top?
I don’t see any way around it – white men will have to revise their definition of success in order to regain their happiness. Is giving your breadwinning wife a back rub when she gets home, and doing the majority of the housework really being “toast”? Until recently, men told their wives that being a helpmate and homemaker was a fine career. Now they just have to convince themselves of the same thing.
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1500 years of white male domination in America? I thought we’ve only been here dominating for about 500…OK, so I’m nitpicking. It’s all I’ve got left…
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Whoops, you are not nitpicking. Such a careless math error raises the question of whether women are qualified to dominate. (I suppose if you count Leif Erikson, it could be 1000 years…)
But seriously, I do not want women to dominate, or for men to feel unnecessary. Even before the recession there were not enough “power” jobs in our economy for every man and woman; some people must work at home. I do not want anyone, regardless of gender, to inherit the disrespect traditionally given to that position. Unfortunately, because we’ve all internalized that disrespect, it falls to each individual to battle their feelings of inferiority on their own.
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What bothers me is the fact that I am classified as “Caucasian”, even though I am a dark skinned Italian man whose parents immigrated to America from the poorest region in Southern Italy! Even in Italy, we were & still looked down upon from the whiter north! Yet, in America, I’ve been clumped together with “real” Anglo Saxon men who tormented me growing up because of my unpronounceable name & ethnically different culture! Now, when I visit my family in Sicily & Calabria; I’m not considered Italian: I’m American! When I’m in the US, I’m Italian! What gives!?!?
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Yes, the dark-skinned Caucasian and the light-skinned African-American directly challenge our society’s racial categorizing, and you are absolutely right to point out how crazy and thoughtless that labeling quickly becomes. “Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?” by Toure, is a book on the theme that sounds interesting to me.
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