White Males Gone Wild?

While guns have taken the brunt of the blame for the recent scourge of mass murders in America, it didn’t take long for the race, class and gender crowd to jump into the fray and proclaim that these tragedies were also caused in part by “frustrated white male privilege.”

So says Hugo Schwyzer, a Pasadena City College professor of history and gender, who argues that these particular crimes were all committed by “spoiled, frustrated, disconnected white males who feel ignored or marginalized,” according to The College Fix.

What’s more, these murderers all came from bucolic suburban environments, added Schwyzer, who said they could have been experiencing “a form of cognitive dissonance, having been told that “the world is supposed to be your oyster.”

After the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, Schwyzer wrote that “Every killer makes his pain another’s problem, but only those who’ve marinated in privilege can conclude that their private pain is the entire world’s problem.”

Schwzyer is apparently not the only academic who holds these beliefs. Back in 2010, a paper by SUNY sociology profs Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel postulates that “the culture of hegemonic masculinity in the U.S. creates a sense of aggrieved entitlement conducive to violence.”

X X X X X X
Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.