The "angry white male" or "angry white man" is a racial stereotype of white men holding conservative or right-wing views in the context of U.S. and Australian politics, often characterized by "opposition to liberal anti-discriminatory or gender policies" and beliefs. [1] [2] The term is usually applied to white men from the United States and Australia. [3] In the United States, the greatest perceived threat to white male dominance has been advances of white women and people of color following the women's liberation movement and Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, in addition to immigration, multiculturalism and LGBT rights. [4]
The term commonly refers to a political voting bloc which emerged in the early 1990s as a reaction to perceived injustices faced by white men in the face of affirmative action quotas in the workplace, much like how the Reagan Democrat bloc emerged a decade earlier. [5] Angry white men are characterized as having animosity toward young people, women or minorities, and liberalism in general. [6] Donald Trump's male supporters have been described by some political commentators as angry white men. [7] [8] [9] [10]
It appeared during Australia's 1998 federal elections. [11] New political parties appeared in that election due to the preexisting fathers' rights movement in Australia. These included the Abolish Family Support/Family Court Party and the Family Law Reform Party. [11] Similar to the usage of the term in the United States, the Australian men categorized as angry white men opposed what they perceived as the feminist agenda. These political parties were created as a reaction to the historic number of women elected to the House of Representatives. [11] Members of these groups claimed that "feminists have entrenched themselves in positions of power and influence in government and are using their power to victimise men". [11]
Senator Eric Abetz from the centre-right Liberal Party, arguing against Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, said in 2016 that it was "passing strange" that the Australian Human Rights Commission does not seem to care about what he perceives as "racist terminology" such as angry white man, but does care if another color is used to describe someone. "One cannot help but think that the term 'white' can only refer to skin colour and therefore [you] are making reference to a skin colour [and] one assumes it must have been on the basis of race that the comment was made", he commented. [12]
The term is applied to those believed to be opposed to the civil rights movement and second-wave feminism. [13]
The films Joe , [14] Raging Bull , [15] Falling Down , Cobb , [15] God Bless America , Taxi Driver , Joker , and Clint Eastwood's performances in Dirty Harry [15] and Gran Torino have been described as an exploration of the angry white man. [16] [17] [18] In particular, the protagonist of Falling Down (a divorced, laid-off defense worker who descends via chance and choice into a spiral of increasing rage and violence) was widely reported upon as a representative of the stereotype. [19]
The character Archie Bunker from the TV sitcoms All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place "turned the angry white male into a cultural icon", according to CBS News. [20] Walter White in the television series Breaking Bad has also been described as an "angry white male". [21]
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Bimbo is slang for a conventionally attractive, sexualized, naïve, and unintelligent woman. The term was originally used in the United States as early as 1919 for an unintelligent or brutish man.
LGBT stereotypes are stereotypes about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are based on their sexual orientations, gender identities, or gender expressions. Stereotypical perceptions may be acquired through interactions with parents, teachers, peers and mass media, or, more generally, through a lack of firsthand familiarity, resulting in an increased reliance on generalizations.
Dirty Harry is an American neo-noir action thriller film series featuring San Francisco Police Department Homicide Division Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan. There are five films: Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983) and The Dead Pool (1988). Clint Eastwood portrayed Callahan in all five films and directed Sudden Impact.
Stereotypes of African Americans are misleading beliefs about the culture of people with partial or total ancestry from any black racial groups of Africa whose ancestors resided in the United States since before 1865, largely connected to the racism and the discrimination to which African Americans are subjected. These beliefs date back to the slavery of black people during the colonial era and they have evolved within American society.
Microaggression is a term used for commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups. The term was coined by Harvard University psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce in 1970 to describe insults and dismissals which he regularly witnessed non-black Americans inflicting on African Americans. By the early 21st century, use of the term was applied to the casual disparagement of any socially marginalized group, including LGBT people, poor people, and disabled people. Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership". The persons making the comments may be otherwise well-intentioned and unaware of the potential impact of their words.
Gran Torino is a 2008 American drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, who also starred in the film. This was Eastwood's first starring role since 2004's Million Dollar Baby. The film features a large Hmong-American cast, as well as one of Eastwood's younger sons, Scott. Eastwood's oldest son of record, Kyle, composed the film's score with Michael Stevens, while Jamie Cullum and Clint Eastwood provide the theme song.
Scott Eastwood is an American actor. The son of actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood, he has starred in several of his father's films, including Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Gran Torino (2008), Invictus (2009), and Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as Texas Chainsaw (2013), Fury (2014), The Longest Ride (2015), Suicide Squad (2016), Snowden (2016), The Fate of the Furious (2017), Pacific Rim Uprising (2018), The Outpost (2020), Wrath of Man (2021) and Fast X (2023).
White backlash, also known as white rage or whitelash, is related to the politics of white grievance, and is the negative response of some white people to the racial progress of other ethnic groups in rights and economic opportunities, as well as their growing cultural parity, political self-determination, or dominance.
An Asian fetish is a strong sexual or romantic preference for people of Asian descent or heritage. The term usually refers to women specifically of East or Southeast Asian descent, though this may also include those of South Asian descent.
African Americans, and African American males in particular, have an ethnic stereotype in which they are portrayed as dangerous criminals. This stereotype is associated with the fact that African Americans are proportionally over-represented in the numbers of those that are arrested and convicted for committing crimes. It has appeared frequently in American popular culture, reinforcing the negative consequences of systemic racism.
American actor and director Clint Eastwood has long shown an interest in politics. He won election as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in April 1986 and in 2001, Governor Gray Davis appointed the Oscar-winner to the California State Park and Recreation Commission. Eastwood endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election and delivered a prime time address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, where he delivered a speech addressed to an empty chair representing Barack Obama. In 2016, Eastwood did not endorse any candidate while expressing a GOP preference. He announced in February 2020 his endorsement of Democratic candidate Mike Bloomberg in the 2020 presidential election, before Bloomberg suspended his campaign.
Walter Kowalski is a fictional character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in the 2008 American film Gran Torino. Walt is depicted as an irritable and prejudiced Korean War veteran whose aging Metro Detroit neighborhood has become home to Hmong immigrants and is plagued with gang violence.
Racism is a concern for many in the Western lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities, with members of racial, ethnic, and national minorities reporting having faced discrimination from other LGBT people.
"Cuckservative" is a pejorative formed as a portmanteau of "cuck", an abbreviation of the word "cuckold", and the political designation "conservative". It has become a derogatory label used by white nationalists and the alt-right in the United States to denigrate other conservatives.
The alt-right is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s, and has been declining since 2017. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves.
Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era is a sociological critique of the angry white male phenomenon in America by Michael Kimmel, first published in 2013. The book was re-published in April 2017 with a new preface by Kimmel discussing U.S. President Donald Trump.
Alpha male and beta male are pseudoscientific terms for men derived from the designations of alpha and beta animals in ethology. They may also be used with other genders, such as women, or additionally use other letters of the Greek alphabet. The popularization of these terms to describe humans has been widely criticized by scientists.
Citations
angry white male n. (also with capital initials) Polit. (orig. and chiefly U.S.) a (usually working-class) white man with-right wing views (typically including opposition to liberal anti-discriminatory policies), esp. viewed as representing an influential class of voter