> Generally when a writer inserts a person's race flippantly like in the parent's quote
It may not have been flippant. There is a contingent of young men, almost always white, who think that minorities now have it easy and white people are the most oppressed group in the US, and that this is why they have trouble getting into the best schools or getting the best jobs. Unqualified affirmative action minorities, they think, took their rightful place.
They never seem to notice that plenty of other white people also got into those school or got those jobs, and that those white people and the minorities who got those admissions or jobs worked very hard for years to get it instead of slacking off like they did and expecting to still make it.
Many of these people have found each other on social media and developed a culture around these beliefs.
In the context of DOGE and its unimpressive staffing I think "culture of mediocre white men" was referring to that group.
As a white man who is mediocre in many things, but blames it on my own laziness or lack of talent in those areas, that is the first thing I thought they were talking about.
It may not have been flippant. There is a contingent of young men, almost always white, who think that minorities now have it easy and white people are the most oppressed group in the US, and that this is why they have trouble getting into the best schools or getting the best jobs. Unqualified affirmative action minorities, they think, took their rightful place.
They never seem to notice that plenty of other white people also got into those school or got those jobs, and that those white people and the minorities who got those admissions or jobs worked very hard for years to get it instead of slacking off like they did and expecting to still make it.
Many of these people have found each other on social media and developed a culture around these beliefs.
In the context of DOGE and its unimpressive staffing I think "culture of mediocre white men" was referring to that group.
As a white man who is mediocre in many things, but blames it on my own laziness or lack of talent in those areas, that is the first thing I thought they were talking about.