White Male Culture: Dominant, But Soon To Be Exotic

When long-time New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton recently died, The New York Times obituary quoted Hamilton's friend, Lewis H. Lapham, as saying the following:

“You were never in doubt about who the cartoonist was. He had a particular beat, as it were — the preppy world, the world of Ralph Lauren, the Protestant WASP establishment that was on their way out, holding on to their diminishing privileges.”


As we know, U.S. demographics are rapidly shifting and the country's historic, white-male-dominated culture is under attack on a number of fronts. Some see the surprising strength of Donald Trump in this year's presidential primaries as a backlash by white males against their diminishing prospects, but if so, that is arguably as much or more economic than cultural.

I mention this because Literary Hub just brought to my attention an article by Ilana Masad arguing that in the field of publishing, the white-male edifice isn't crumbling fast enough.

"Unless you're a white guy from Brooklyn, the publishing industry has a huge problem when it comes to representation. But no one is sure how to fix it," the teaser on Masad's piece says.

But in reading the article, one can't help but be impressed more by the widening range of forces arrayed against what's left of the traditional publishing industry than by Ms Masad's complaints. Change is clearly on the way.

Closely related to this phenomenon are persist attacks on what constitutes "the canon" of American (and more broadly, Western) literature --  the body of books that have been identified as being the most important and influential in shaping culture. In all probability, change is on the way there, too.

I suspect I will have more to say on this topic as time goes by.

(Full disclosure: I am a white male and have now been one for quite some time.)