The Wrong Kind of Black

The Wrong Kind of Black Race and gender aren’t the only categories that determine who gets special treatment. Rick Friedman / Corbis / Getty Progressives often follow a particular pattern when they want to dismiss a phenomenon that challenges their beliefs. The writer Rob Henderson summed it up in a tweet in 2021 : “Step 1: It’s not really happening Step 2: Yeah, it’s happening, but it’s not a big deal Step 3: It’s a good thing, actually Step 4: People freaking out about it are the real problem.” This was the left’s archetypal response to any number of excesses and abuses perpetrated under the banner of social justice, including cancel culture, the outbursts of violence during the so-called racial reckoning of 2020, and the violations of even basic fairness at the peak of the #MeToo movement. The cycle kicked off again last week in response to a viral article by Jacob Savage in the online magazine Compact . Savage’s essay, like one he wrote earlier this year , argues that white Millennial men seeking work or recognition in prestigious cultural fields such as media, publishing, and academia have faced structural discrimination. Starting around 2014, Savage writes, “in industry after industry, gatekeepers promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn’t a white man-and then provided just that.” Savage is correct: Women and people of color really have received preferential treatment in many elite industries in recent years. But he misses a crucial part of the story, which goes beyond gender and race. Being Black (or any number of protected identities) affords you special privileges only if you think and speak how gatekeepers believe you’re supposed to. As I’ve witnessed and experienced throughout my career, there is a right kind of Black and a wrong one. Savage marshals ample data to make his point. In 2011, he writes, white men occupied 48 percent of lower-level TV-writing positions; in 2024, they filled 12 percent. Out of 45 tenure-track hires in the humanities and social sciences at Brown University since 2022, he says, just three have been white American men. Since 2015, according to Savage, 70 Millennial writers have been named finalists for National Book Awards; once again, he writes, only three have been white men. Two of these men were minorities of another kind: military veterans. (Neither Brown nor the National Book Awards immediately responded to a request for comment; I did not independently verify these figures.) An executive at the foundation that administers the award told one of them-Elliot Ackerman, a veteran, contributing writer at The Atlantic , and friend of mine-that he must have been really good. As Ackerman relayed to me at the time, the executive told him that the foundation made sure the judges were “super woke,” and the selection process was not designed for people like him to become finalists. Despite the extensive figures that Savage cites, prominent voices on the left found ways to reject or decry his argument. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur fellow and the reporter...

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