On Ross Douthat

I have not even begun to read Douthat’s column, “The Roots of White Anxiety”, and I am already supremely irritated merely by the title.  A title is supposed to set the tone for what the audience should expect from the work and I expect something that will prove to be (or at least should be) deeply embarrassing for anyone that supposedly suffers from ‘white anxiety’.  There is the possibility that he is discussing minorities’ anxiety regarding white people, which given the recent anti-immigration initiatives would certainly be justified, but I’m guessing this will be something more along the lines of a neo-classical Pat Buchanan-esque rant supposedly on why whites in this country are becoming increasingly anxious about their place in society.  Let’s read and find out! 

LOL-fifth and sixth words in the column: “Pat Buchanan”.  Re: “Harvard being Harvard”, it seems like a gross generalization that the entire Harvard study body is some bastion of liberalism that would knee-jerkingly “[sneer] and [make] wisecracks.”  Then again, I did not attend Harvard therefore I wouldn’t really know. 

Granted, this is an interesting topic regarding college admissions and race/ethnicity and he makes an excellent point that while considerable numbers of white students have considerable socio-economic advantages over their minority peers, there are a significant number of whites that do not and this is worth exploring. 

I understand the point that the lower-middle class white students are affiliated with “Red [State] America” and thus generally might not be as appealing a candidate when the institution’s primary objective is so-called diversity.   Again though, Douthat seems to over-generalize a great deal in assigning over-simplified thought processes to the opposing political dichotomies.  That is, he simply falls back on the supposedly tried and true characterizations that Republicans are white, Christian conspiracy theorists that may or may not bomb a federal building at any given moment.  Democrats, of course, represent the liberal elite whose entire existence revolves around looking down on lunatic right-wingers and drinking lattes or something.  While I may in fact fall into the latter category that simply does not mean that all US citizens fit neatly into one of these two descriptions. 

I understand it is infinitely easier to write about the political discourse in the country if it were a simple matter of black and white, red and blue, Pat Buchanan and Harvard University, but clearly that is not the case.  Douthat does in fact do a good job of raising an important issue, for just as there has been a focus on empowerment of women in the workplace, minorities and equality in higher education has also been a priority. 

I suppose I tend not to give Ross Douthat very much credit, for while he is certainly a conservative, he is at least a thoughtful one-something of a budding David Brooks, if you will.  Yet both men continually miss the bigger picture and for Douthat’s sake I sincerely hope he does not turn into another David Brooks as I personally can barely stomach one.