Sigh, your evocative description of what is used to like almost brought a tear to my eye, I miss it so much. And I'm a woman and all my female friends always talked and acted like this too. We all did. Now, we can only do so with our spouses and an ever-dwindling and smaller circle of true friends you can trust.
This just solidifies my belief that Americans born around 1974 to 1982ish...those Gen X who were born AFTER the civil rights and women's lib movements had occurred and grew up assuming we were all equal, when Cosby Show was the reigning TV show, but before parents turned into hovering children-obsessed helicopter parents...are truly the coolest and best people. The nineties, when we came of age, were a golden era when people actually liked each other. I agree that by 2000, things had started to go too far and the first decade of the 2000s was culturally trashy. And now we have this sanctimonious, mean, nasty, spiteful, envious woke backlash happening.
I try to figure out what it was about the Gen X upbringing that makes us cooler than everyone else -- sorry but it's true. We had a sense of self worth in a very grounded and humble way. We didn't get offended and we didn't assert grievances. Today's young seem on the one hand to be INCREDIBLY insecure, anxious, envious, striving, always worrying about likes and influence and status and image and self-identity, while on the other hand they're self-important and sanctimonious and moralistic and nasty and judgmental. No one seems to actually like each other anymore, and certainly no one trusts each other. Everything is a competition of who has the most grievances (or can be the best ally to the aggrieved) and who has the most claim to oppression, who can be the snarkiest. What an enormous turnoff.
In contrast, I find Gen Xers to be for the most part stable and comfortable with themselves, yet also not of the opinion that anyone really cares enough about them for the things they say or do to be of interest or consequence. And we liked each other and had fun with each other, we truly did. We were rough and nasty and aloof and didn't have enough self-importance to get offended by anything, which came off as apathy, but it came from a place of true friendship and affection, not what I perceive today as a constant game of one-upsmanship, cloaked in moralistic high-ground.
What happened? Well, for one thing, starting in the 90s, parents starting raising kids in a much more child-centered and "soft" manner. When I was a kid we were actually scared of our parents and teachers -- and of our friend's parents too! I remember being terrified whenever my friend's dad came home from work and I'd hightail it home. That was normal in the 80s. Probably never happens today. But we also were actually steeped in an ethic of equality of the sexes and races, and believed it. So why not make everything into a joke? It was always us against the adults. We loved each other and everyone could have fun and everyone could make fun of each other.
And frankly, I think most Gen Xers find what's going on today to be stomach turning (I'm not leaving anyone out, but I think it's near universal for those in their 40s). It's just such wimpy, weak, narcissistic, self-serious, self-righteous, pathetic behavior. And it's sad. It's sad so many young women now truly view men as a class of sexual predators (unless they shirk their gender, then they're welcomed). And that so many black and other POC view themselves as oppressed people that white people secretly look down on. In the 90s, there was much more genuine affection and trust between the sexes and different ethnicities (at least in my little world).
I do blame, for the most part, a certain class of very lame and uncool women for a lot of this. They are for the most part the activists and the teachers and those working on non-profits and as professors and the HR professionals who drove much of the current woke nonsense. A world dominated by men is brutal, hierarchical, and exploitative. A world dominated by women becomes overly indulgent and governed by the tools that women have always been more adept at wielding for control and manipulation: shame, ostracism, spite, envy, and exaggerated appeals to sympathy. Perhaps its no surprise that their new demi-gods, the one group they are terrified by and won't dare to cross, are the ones who most strongly leverage the preferred tools of both men and women: big black trans women, like the two in your photo at the top of this essay. They've got the physical domination and display the aggression of men, they're still free to use cutting humor and make fun of everyone else, and they fully wield the feminine manipulative tools of victimization, grievance, and shaming. Therefore, they can't be touched and their interests are to be elevated at all times.
It will be fascinating to see where this all goes. Sadly, while I believe most Gen X view the woke stuff (as well as the right wing crazies) as revolting, we're unlikely to do anything about it. Even though we're in our 40s now and therefore should be the parents and managers in charge. I don't think our generation has enough of a sense of self-importance or power to try to will ourselves upon others or dominate them. It's just against our ethic. At my workplace at least, it's all Gen X who are the bosses now. And the Zoomers/late Millennials and the Boomers are practically at war and constantly coming to us with their respective demands, complaints, and grievances, while it wouldn't have occurred to any of us to ever make such demands. We're just trying to keep the peace.
I watched the recent Chappelle Netflix special, not having much experience with his comedy, only really watching because so many people I find obsessed with Race and Gender and otherwise humorless were raging at him and it. I found him and it to be very human and refreshing. That it is such a terrible thing to suggest there is something real about gender, as in, it is the fundamental basis of mammalian biology on planet earth, is to me just one more regrettable sign of how far removed from nature we have become, about as pathological as PFAS chemicals, microplastics and eternal fossil fuel consumerism. That so many transgendered and friends of transgendered hate Chapelle and this special, despite his very touching tribute to his transgendered friend and fellow comedian who killed herself because of the hate she received from the transgendered community, for her support of Chappelle, makes me wary of my support for the transgendered. That corporations generally, the medical establishment, the military and the Intelligence community have embraced transgendered/woke ideology makes me doubly wary. The empire it seems, having spread consumer ideology globally to the ruination of the biosphere, has embraced cancel culture as a means to maintain hegemony, but seems to me more a sign of civilizational collapse in the making.
Nicely summarized points about the trajectory of masculinity from natural roots to the point of egregiousness, and the resulting backlash, and now the alternative trajectory occurring of the feminization of society. Ive wondered recently how far this feminization will go before there’s a backlash, and what the nature of that backlash could possibly be. The interconnectedness of the globe, built on the infrastructure born by the hands of men, but obviously supported by women, favors a feminine world where EQ is more necessary than physical command.
Given your point about masculinity having its origins in the dynamics of nature, I wonder at what point in the future does that ever fit in again? Honestly, what is the point of men if there is little to no role left for one of their fundamental natures? Do they morph into a different type of gendered being whose qualities are more adapted to future societies?
There are paragraphs in some of your pieces that deliver an experience not so different from that of watching a basketball player steal the ball and make a fast break for the opposite end of the court to score — you see the shape of the play as it’s unfolding, you see risk and uncertainty and ambition, you feel a certain suspense — will he pull this off? — and then, in a blink, boom, slam dunk.
Gotta admit I’m really hoping the “20-volume Dave Chapelle Review” is a bit of Wesley’s characteristic dry humor… but I suppose if anybody can make such a thing readable it’s him.
Chappelle's anxiety that led to his "abrupt self-cancellation" wasn't misplaced (an assertion I'm almost certain Wesley agrees with, based on my reading of The Soul of Yellow Folk). It's important to be clear-eyed about this, and not succumb to gauzy nostalgia (and I'm as guilty as anyone) for the good ol' days of the 70s-90s, when too often, we were color-blind only when convenient. Lazy stereotypes of entire generations of human beings obfuscates rather than elucidates; far more binds the generations than distinguishes them from each other. Human nature persists.
From my seats on the 25 yard-line of the Alabama-Tennessee game Saturday night -- Roll Tide -- some observations. They're not fresh -- I've had them before, I've been to dozens of 'Bama games in my lifetime and grew up in this state -- but they still, somehow, startle me anew.
Before the game, the 1971 Alabama football team was honored. Along the south endzone stood fifty or so gray-headed white men, many of them of almost comically slight stature. While 'Bama technically integrated in 1971, only two black players were on the squad that year. That 1971 team won an SEC title but was absolutely thrashed by a fully-integrated Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl for the national championship.
1971: that's 35 years after Jesse Owens -- incidentally, an Alabama native -- dominated the Berlin Olympics; that's 639 homers into Hank Aaron's -- another Alabama native -- record-breaking 755; that's 638 homers into Willie Mays' -- yet another (!) Alabama native -- illustrious, arguably-GOAT career. And the University of Alabama's legendary football program was only taking the most tepid baby steps toward allowing black athletes on the team.
Today, of course, 80% of the team, and 90+% of the starters, are black. The makeup of the attendees remains overwhelmingly white. It makes for an interesting, and not altogether unhealthy, dynamic -- as long as we're playing well, that is.
It was homecoming. At halftime, I went to get some Dreamland BBQ nachos while my 12 year-old daughter remained in her seat to take in the festivities. While I stood in line, I heard a loud boo go up from the crowd -- during halftime, mind you. When I returned to my seat, my daughter asked me why the crowd booed the homecoming queen, but cheered loudly for the runner-up.
So that was the boo, I thought. I explained it to her: the runner-up was a well-known and popular softball player, a pitcher who had led the Tide to the Women's College World Series last year, a tall and stately blonde, quite popular on campus and well-known throughout the state.
(This isn't going where you think it is.)
The homecoming queen was also a white woman. She was the "Machine-backed" candidate for homecoming queen, certainly the daughter of an influential, old-money family. What is the "Machine"? It's a secret society, a remnant of the Theta Nu Epsilon suprafraternity, that controls student affairs at the University. It's made up of secret representatives from the most prestigious fraternities and sororities on campus. It's been running the campus for over a hundred years, using the Student Government Association as a sort of training ground or farm league for state politics. It rarely loses, and when it does -- or even thinks it might -- it engages in conduct that makes Watergate look laughably tame.
Why the boos? There was a widespread belief in the student body -- only 20-25% of the students are members of the Greek system -- that the Machine would rig the election. And, as it turns out, they did: for starters, the Machine-controlled SGA simply ignored the run-off requirement and gave the crown to their candidate with only 47% of the vote. The softball player had received 45% of the vote. There were three other non-Machine candidates who shared the remaining 8% of the votes.
Same ol' shit.
Reflecting on Saturday night, I reread an Esquire Magazine expose of the "Machine" from 1992. Then, our color-blind, Gen-X fraternity brother -- trying to navigate calls to force the integration of the Greek system following an incident where two white Kappa Delta pledges had donned full blackface to attend a "Who Rides the Bus?"-themed fraternity party costumed as pregnant black women -- articulated his own dream of racial harmony and the conditions under which he'd accept integration of his particular fraternity, Kappa Alpha:
" "I'd love to be president [of Kappa Alpha] when there's one [a black person] who's right," he says. He seems sincere. "But I don't see it in the next five years. I'd love to give him a break. Someone who really, really wants to be a K.A....Someone who appreciates southern heritage....Someone with the same view I have, that there's niggers and there's blacks and there's rednecks and white people." "
'Bama would go on to win the college football national championship that year, 1992, when they routed Miami in the Sugar Bowl. Black players like George Teague, Antonio Langham, Sam Shade, Eric Curry, John Copeland and Tommie Johnson led a legendarily-stingy Crimson Tide defense to a stunning upset over the heavily-favored 'Canes. Our golden boy white quarterback was 4 of 18 for 13 yards and 2 interceptions.
Our friendly, color-blind, Gen-X, Kappa Alpha member almost certainly celebrated that victory and thumped his chest harder than anyone.
Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that integration had to be forced on the UA Greek system -- in 2014. Not that it has made much difference.
But perhaps it will surprise you to learn that Alabama continues to labor under the longest written constitution in the world -- no, literally -- the 1901 Constitution, whose explicit purpose, as articulated by the president of the constitutional convention during his opening speech, was "to establish white supremacy in this state." It's been remarkably successful in preserving the power of the landed gentry, the former slave-owning plantation farming families, while ensuring that the descendants of slaves stuck in the Black Belt and poor whites stuck in the Appalachian foothills have virtually no prospects. And, like the stupid, petty homecoming queen race at the University of Alabama in 2021, the "Machine" of that time quite openly stole the election ratifying the 1901 Constitution, going so far as to stuff ballot boxes in Black Belt counties with more votes than there were citizens - literally.
No, Chappelle's anxiety wasn't misplaced at all. He sensed something that was - and is - real: a failure, our failure, to live up to what we say we want, which is to see and treat others as full-bodied individuals, regardless of skin color, regardless of social station or power, and our unwillingness to courageously confront real injustice and real entrenched power, and a tendency, our tendency, to treat tokenism and smiling at black people and rooting for black athletes and laughing at black comedians and "having black friends" like the endpoint of racial progress. It's not, and he was right to sense that he was being used in that way, even if it was unintentional.
The answer isn't to throw out the creed, though. The creed is good, right, and just -- indeed, the only just and workable principle for a civilized society. Chappelle has re-emerged to courageously fight for the creed, even as so many of us have cowered in the corner as the Successor Ideology terrorizes the land. Certainly, many will seek to use Chappelle in the same way they used him before. I hope it won't be too many. He's got something very important to say.
I upgraded to paid service recently because you challenge me like few current writers do, both in your ideas and your use of the language. Reading this post again from the point of view of one of those athletes as a child and young man in the 80's and 90's, and my time as an adult working among men in various trades and warehouses, never able nor willing really to compete in the way you describe, preferring to let my abilities and work ethic speak for me, you elucidate the changes well, and their relation to successor ideology.
I see Chappelle's "self-cancelation," if it is an abnegation of minority culture, homo-social, ironic, transcendence of racism of the past, it seemed to me as much a rejection of the excesses of successor ideology, and also a plea for peace. Chappelle has transcended cancellation in a way, so able to call it out on the carpet so to speak. As a comedian it must be humorous to see the humorlessness of those who have advocated consciously or not for the end of due-process and free speech. I think he is inviting a new backlash against a new PC that is embraced by the empire.
At least in my world, females engaged in this anti-PC conversation all the time. In my world and perhaps because I am older, we referred to our Lesbian friends (to their face) as "lezzies," when we were headed to Skokie, we were going to "Jew town," we made dick jokes a lot, called our girlfriends that had an affinity for gay male friends "queer whores," called our white S. African friends "African-Americans" and lots more. This wasn't way back in the day, PC was already a thing. And still...In closed rooms, this conversation continues with my female friends. We don't blink an eye. We aren't very happy about the so-called pussyification of society, but I find many people with prostrates are just as responsible for this change in the order of things.
This is an excellent piece. I too am interested to see you're going with it.
I don't agree with the "free pass" that was historically given to men "in the locker room." I tend to think that what you are in private is what you really are. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." - Jesus of Nazareth
That said, if free speech is the cornerstone of a free society, the price is the occasional set of hurt feelings.
Very insightful, one of your best yet. I'm a little older, but I know well the culture you're talking about, and a lot of what you say about it rings true for me. It's interesting how many people seem to still long for it, and pretend it still exists--either because they want to live in it, or because they find it emotionally or politically satisfying to continue reacting against it.
You've made me realize that our cultural arguments today really are rooted in a culture that was in place decades ago.
It's worth noting (sorry if I've been beaten to the punch here, 64 comments is a lot to read today) that the school culture shift of the early 2000s had additional influences -- the Columbine Shooting and the introduction of Common Core. The leadup to Columbine involved that same culture of administrative passivity towards 'rough male socialization' and of hazing those who didn't make the cut -- this is not the only explanation but it's something that schools believe they can control, hence the attacks on "toxic masculinity" and the "war on boys." Common Core restructured schools towards test-taking and related academic soft skills, all of which require a lot of sitting around studying and not a lot of *doing things.* Young boys have a much harder time sitting still for long periods of time than young girls. This has also contributed to the "war on boys" and the absurd over-prescription of stimulants to them to get them to confirm to these new behavioral standards.
The culture shift you describe certainly plays a part in both these events, and personally I think it would be a fool's errand to try to determine if the cultural shift here was a cause or an effect -- it's all part of the same growing snowball. The children who grew up fully in this new school culture (like myself, I was in kindergarten in 2000) are beginning to fully participate in the production and reproduction of culture.
Nice, Sir Wesley, but too tired to give it enough thought. I was literally in a YMCA boys club until we moved away from all my boyhood friends when I was 14.
Alcoholic Mom through puberty. Second wave of Women's Lib in a Matriarchal household with two fem-militant sisters?
Took me decades, but I didn't get any lasting scars that bother me now at 66. Not saying there's much hope. Just that I lucked out.
I must admit, today’s installment leaves me scratching my head a bit about where this line of thinking/reasoning is headed - but I will keep reading to find out.
Sigh, your evocative description of what is used to like almost brought a tear to my eye, I miss it so much. And I'm a woman and all my female friends always talked and acted like this too. We all did. Now, we can only do so with our spouses and an ever-dwindling and smaller circle of true friends you can trust.
This just solidifies my belief that Americans born around 1974 to 1982ish...those Gen X who were born AFTER the civil rights and women's lib movements had occurred and grew up assuming we were all equal, when Cosby Show was the reigning TV show, but before parents turned into hovering children-obsessed helicopter parents...are truly the coolest and best people. The nineties, when we came of age, were a golden era when people actually liked each other. I agree that by 2000, things had started to go too far and the first decade of the 2000s was culturally trashy. And now we have this sanctimonious, mean, nasty, spiteful, envious woke backlash happening.
I try to figure out what it was about the Gen X upbringing that makes us cooler than everyone else -- sorry but it's true. We had a sense of self worth in a very grounded and humble way. We didn't get offended and we didn't assert grievances. Today's young seem on the one hand to be INCREDIBLY insecure, anxious, envious, striving, always worrying about likes and influence and status and image and self-identity, while on the other hand they're self-important and sanctimonious and moralistic and nasty and judgmental. No one seems to actually like each other anymore, and certainly no one trusts each other. Everything is a competition of who has the most grievances (or can be the best ally to the aggrieved) and who has the most claim to oppression, who can be the snarkiest. What an enormous turnoff.
In contrast, I find Gen Xers to be for the most part stable and comfortable with themselves, yet also not of the opinion that anyone really cares enough about them for the things they say or do to be of interest or consequence. And we liked each other and had fun with each other, we truly did. We were rough and nasty and aloof and didn't have enough self-importance to get offended by anything, which came off as apathy, but it came from a place of true friendship and affection, not what I perceive today as a constant game of one-upsmanship, cloaked in moralistic high-ground.
What happened? Well, for one thing, starting in the 90s, parents starting raising kids in a much more child-centered and "soft" manner. When I was a kid we were actually scared of our parents and teachers -- and of our friend's parents too! I remember being terrified whenever my friend's dad came home from work and I'd hightail it home. That was normal in the 80s. Probably never happens today. But we also were actually steeped in an ethic of equality of the sexes and races, and believed it. So why not make everything into a joke? It was always us against the adults. We loved each other and everyone could have fun and everyone could make fun of each other.
And frankly, I think most Gen Xers find what's going on today to be stomach turning (I'm not leaving anyone out, but I think it's near universal for those in their 40s). It's just such wimpy, weak, narcissistic, self-serious, self-righteous, pathetic behavior. And it's sad. It's sad so many young women now truly view men as a class of sexual predators (unless they shirk their gender, then they're welcomed). And that so many black and other POC view themselves as oppressed people that white people secretly look down on. In the 90s, there was much more genuine affection and trust between the sexes and different ethnicities (at least in my little world).
I do blame, for the most part, a certain class of very lame and uncool women for a lot of this. They are for the most part the activists and the teachers and those working on non-profits and as professors and the HR professionals who drove much of the current woke nonsense. A world dominated by men is brutal, hierarchical, and exploitative. A world dominated by women becomes overly indulgent and governed by the tools that women have always been more adept at wielding for control and manipulation: shame, ostracism, spite, envy, and exaggerated appeals to sympathy. Perhaps its no surprise that their new demi-gods, the one group they are terrified by and won't dare to cross, are the ones who most strongly leverage the preferred tools of both men and women: big black trans women, like the two in your photo at the top of this essay. They've got the physical domination and display the aggression of men, they're still free to use cutting humor and make fun of everyone else, and they fully wield the feminine manipulative tools of victimization, grievance, and shaming. Therefore, they can't be touched and their interests are to be elevated at all times.
It will be fascinating to see where this all goes. Sadly, while I believe most Gen X view the woke stuff (as well as the right wing crazies) as revolting, we're unlikely to do anything about it. Even though we're in our 40s now and therefore should be the parents and managers in charge. I don't think our generation has enough of a sense of self-importance or power to try to will ourselves upon others or dominate them. It's just against our ethic. At my workplace at least, it's all Gen X who are the bosses now. And the Zoomers/late Millennials and the Boomers are practically at war and constantly coming to us with their respective demands, complaints, and grievances, while it wouldn't have occurred to any of us to ever make such demands. We're just trying to keep the peace.
I watched the recent Chappelle Netflix special, not having much experience with his comedy, only really watching because so many people I find obsessed with Race and Gender and otherwise humorless were raging at him and it. I found him and it to be very human and refreshing. That it is such a terrible thing to suggest there is something real about gender, as in, it is the fundamental basis of mammalian biology on planet earth, is to me just one more regrettable sign of how far removed from nature we have become, about as pathological as PFAS chemicals, microplastics and eternal fossil fuel consumerism. That so many transgendered and friends of transgendered hate Chapelle and this special, despite his very touching tribute to his transgendered friend and fellow comedian who killed herself because of the hate she received from the transgendered community, for her support of Chappelle, makes me wary of my support for the transgendered. That corporations generally, the medical establishment, the military and the Intelligence community have embraced transgendered/woke ideology makes me doubly wary. The empire it seems, having spread consumer ideology globally to the ruination of the biosphere, has embraced cancel culture as a means to maintain hegemony, but seems to me more a sign of civilizational collapse in the making.
Nicely summarized points about the trajectory of masculinity from natural roots to the point of egregiousness, and the resulting backlash, and now the alternative trajectory occurring of the feminization of society. Ive wondered recently how far this feminization will go before there’s a backlash, and what the nature of that backlash could possibly be. The interconnectedness of the globe, built on the infrastructure born by the hands of men, but obviously supported by women, favors a feminine world where EQ is more necessary than physical command.
Given your point about masculinity having its origins in the dynamics of nature, I wonder at what point in the future does that ever fit in again? Honestly, what is the point of men if there is little to no role left for one of their fundamental natures? Do they morph into a different type of gendered being whose qualities are more adapted to future societies?
Super weird to think about.
There are paragraphs in some of your pieces that deliver an experience not so different from that of watching a basketball player steal the ball and make a fast break for the opposite end of the court to score — you see the shape of the play as it’s unfolding, you see risk and uncertainty and ambition, you feel a certain suspense — will he pull this off? — and then, in a blink, boom, slam dunk.
Gotta admit I’m really hoping the “20-volume Dave Chapelle Review” is a bit of Wesley’s characteristic dry humor… but I suppose if anybody can make such a thing readable it’s him.
Chappelle's anxiety that led to his "abrupt self-cancellation" wasn't misplaced (an assertion I'm almost certain Wesley agrees with, based on my reading of The Soul of Yellow Folk). It's important to be clear-eyed about this, and not succumb to gauzy nostalgia (and I'm as guilty as anyone) for the good ol' days of the 70s-90s, when too often, we were color-blind only when convenient. Lazy stereotypes of entire generations of human beings obfuscates rather than elucidates; far more binds the generations than distinguishes them from each other. Human nature persists.
From my seats on the 25 yard-line of the Alabama-Tennessee game Saturday night -- Roll Tide -- some observations. They're not fresh -- I've had them before, I've been to dozens of 'Bama games in my lifetime and grew up in this state -- but they still, somehow, startle me anew.
Before the game, the 1971 Alabama football team was honored. Along the south endzone stood fifty or so gray-headed white men, many of them of almost comically slight stature. While 'Bama technically integrated in 1971, only two black players were on the squad that year. That 1971 team won an SEC title but was absolutely thrashed by a fully-integrated Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl for the national championship.
1971: that's 35 years after Jesse Owens -- incidentally, an Alabama native -- dominated the Berlin Olympics; that's 639 homers into Hank Aaron's -- another Alabama native -- record-breaking 755; that's 638 homers into Willie Mays' -- yet another (!) Alabama native -- illustrious, arguably-GOAT career. And the University of Alabama's legendary football program was only taking the most tepid baby steps toward allowing black athletes on the team.
Today, of course, 80% of the team, and 90+% of the starters, are black. The makeup of the attendees remains overwhelmingly white. It makes for an interesting, and not altogether unhealthy, dynamic -- as long as we're playing well, that is.
It was homecoming. At halftime, I went to get some Dreamland BBQ nachos while my 12 year-old daughter remained in her seat to take in the festivities. While I stood in line, I heard a loud boo go up from the crowd -- during halftime, mind you. When I returned to my seat, my daughter asked me why the crowd booed the homecoming queen, but cheered loudly for the runner-up.
So that was the boo, I thought. I explained it to her: the runner-up was a well-known and popular softball player, a pitcher who had led the Tide to the Women's College World Series last year, a tall and stately blonde, quite popular on campus and well-known throughout the state.
(This isn't going where you think it is.)
The homecoming queen was also a white woman. She was the "Machine-backed" candidate for homecoming queen, certainly the daughter of an influential, old-money family. What is the "Machine"? It's a secret society, a remnant of the Theta Nu Epsilon suprafraternity, that controls student affairs at the University. It's made up of secret representatives from the most prestigious fraternities and sororities on campus. It's been running the campus for over a hundred years, using the Student Government Association as a sort of training ground or farm league for state politics. It rarely loses, and when it does -- or even thinks it might -- it engages in conduct that makes Watergate look laughably tame.
Why the boos? There was a widespread belief in the student body -- only 20-25% of the students are members of the Greek system -- that the Machine would rig the election. And, as it turns out, they did: for starters, the Machine-controlled SGA simply ignored the run-off requirement and gave the crown to their candidate with only 47% of the vote. The softball player had received 45% of the vote. There were three other non-Machine candidates who shared the remaining 8% of the votes.
Same ol' shit.
Reflecting on Saturday night, I reread an Esquire Magazine expose of the "Machine" from 1992. Then, our color-blind, Gen-X fraternity brother -- trying to navigate calls to force the integration of the Greek system following an incident where two white Kappa Delta pledges had donned full blackface to attend a "Who Rides the Bus?"-themed fraternity party costumed as pregnant black women -- articulated his own dream of racial harmony and the conditions under which he'd accept integration of his particular fraternity, Kappa Alpha:
" "I'd love to be president [of Kappa Alpha] when there's one [a black person] who's right," he says. He seems sincere. "But I don't see it in the next five years. I'd love to give him a break. Someone who really, really wants to be a K.A....Someone who appreciates southern heritage....Someone with the same view I have, that there's niggers and there's blacks and there's rednecks and white people." "
'Bama would go on to win the college football national championship that year, 1992, when they routed Miami in the Sugar Bowl. Black players like George Teague, Antonio Langham, Sam Shade, Eric Curry, John Copeland and Tommie Johnson led a legendarily-stingy Crimson Tide defense to a stunning upset over the heavily-favored 'Canes. Our golden boy white quarterback was 4 of 18 for 13 yards and 2 interceptions.
Our friendly, color-blind, Gen-X, Kappa Alpha member almost certainly celebrated that victory and thumped his chest harder than anyone.
Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that integration had to be forced on the UA Greek system -- in 2014. Not that it has made much difference.
But perhaps it will surprise you to learn that Alabama continues to labor under the longest written constitution in the world -- no, literally -- the 1901 Constitution, whose explicit purpose, as articulated by the president of the constitutional convention during his opening speech, was "to establish white supremacy in this state." It's been remarkably successful in preserving the power of the landed gentry, the former slave-owning plantation farming families, while ensuring that the descendants of slaves stuck in the Black Belt and poor whites stuck in the Appalachian foothills have virtually no prospects. And, like the stupid, petty homecoming queen race at the University of Alabama in 2021, the "Machine" of that time quite openly stole the election ratifying the 1901 Constitution, going so far as to stuff ballot boxes in Black Belt counties with more votes than there were citizens - literally.
No, Chappelle's anxiety wasn't misplaced at all. He sensed something that was - and is - real: a failure, our failure, to live up to what we say we want, which is to see and treat others as full-bodied individuals, regardless of skin color, regardless of social station or power, and our unwillingness to courageously confront real injustice and real entrenched power, and a tendency, our tendency, to treat tokenism and smiling at black people and rooting for black athletes and laughing at black comedians and "having black friends" like the endpoint of racial progress. It's not, and he was right to sense that he was being used in that way, even if it was unintentional.
The answer isn't to throw out the creed, though. The creed is good, right, and just -- indeed, the only just and workable principle for a civilized society. Chappelle has re-emerged to courageously fight for the creed, even as so many of us have cowered in the corner as the Successor Ideology terrorizes the land. Certainly, many will seek to use Chappelle in the same way they used him before. I hope it won't be too many. He's got something very important to say.
I upgraded to paid service recently because you challenge me like few current writers do, both in your ideas and your use of the language. Reading this post again from the point of view of one of those athletes as a child and young man in the 80's and 90's, and my time as an adult working among men in various trades and warehouses, never able nor willing really to compete in the way you describe, preferring to let my abilities and work ethic speak for me, you elucidate the changes well, and their relation to successor ideology.
I see Chappelle's "self-cancelation," if it is an abnegation of minority culture, homo-social, ironic, transcendence of racism of the past, it seemed to me as much a rejection of the excesses of successor ideology, and also a plea for peace. Chappelle has transcended cancellation in a way, so able to call it out on the carpet so to speak. As a comedian it must be humorous to see the humorlessness of those who have advocated consciously or not for the end of due-process and free speech. I think he is inviting a new backlash against a new PC that is embraced by the empire.
At least in my world, females engaged in this anti-PC conversation all the time. In my world and perhaps because I am older, we referred to our Lesbian friends (to their face) as "lezzies," when we were headed to Skokie, we were going to "Jew town," we made dick jokes a lot, called our girlfriends that had an affinity for gay male friends "queer whores," called our white S. African friends "African-Americans" and lots more. This wasn't way back in the day, PC was already a thing. And still...In closed rooms, this conversation continues with my female friends. We don't blink an eye. We aren't very happy about the so-called pussyification of society, but I find many people with prostrates are just as responsible for this change in the order of things.
"Homosocial." Now that's provocative!
This is an excellent piece. I too am interested to see you're going with it.
I don't agree with the "free pass" that was historically given to men "in the locker room." I tend to think that what you are in private is what you really are. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." - Jesus of Nazareth
That said, if free speech is the cornerstone of a free society, the price is the occasional set of hurt feelings.
Very insightful, one of your best yet. I'm a little older, but I know well the culture you're talking about, and a lot of what you say about it rings true for me. It's interesting how many people seem to still long for it, and pretend it still exists--either because they want to live in it, or because they find it emotionally or politically satisfying to continue reacting against it.
You've made me realize that our cultural arguments today really are rooted in a culture that was in place decades ago.
I am also asthmatic, effete and sensitive. But I'm not of Korean stock and do not descend from Confucian intellectuals.
I am consistently awed by your writing and intelligence.
It's worth noting (sorry if I've been beaten to the punch here, 64 comments is a lot to read today) that the school culture shift of the early 2000s had additional influences -- the Columbine Shooting and the introduction of Common Core. The leadup to Columbine involved that same culture of administrative passivity towards 'rough male socialization' and of hazing those who didn't make the cut -- this is not the only explanation but it's something that schools believe they can control, hence the attacks on "toxic masculinity" and the "war on boys." Common Core restructured schools towards test-taking and related academic soft skills, all of which require a lot of sitting around studying and not a lot of *doing things.* Young boys have a much harder time sitting still for long periods of time than young girls. This has also contributed to the "war on boys" and the absurd over-prescription of stimulants to them to get them to confirm to these new behavioral standards.
The culture shift you describe certainly plays a part in both these events, and personally I think it would be a fool's errand to try to determine if the cultural shift here was a cause or an effect -- it's all part of the same growing snowball. The children who grew up fully in this new school culture (like myself, I was in kindergarten in 2000) are beginning to fully participate in the production and reproduction of culture.
Nice, Sir Wesley, but too tired to give it enough thought. I was literally in a YMCA boys club until we moved away from all my boyhood friends when I was 14.
Alcoholic Mom through puberty. Second wave of Women's Lib in a Matriarchal household with two fem-militant sisters?
Took me decades, but I didn't get any lasting scars that bother me now at 66. Not saying there's much hope. Just that I lucked out.
TYTY Sir!
I must admit, today’s installment leaves me scratching my head a bit about where this line of thinking/reasoning is headed - but I will keep reading to find out.