The Insular City Off the Coast of America

By David Samuel McCalmont

Just 38 percent of the adult residents of Manhattan are married, a figure about 12 points lower than that for the nation as a whole.

Fifty-one percent of Manhattan’s adult males and 48 percent of its adult females have never been married, a rate much higher than the national rate of 37 percent for men and 32 percent for women.

Among the 1.6 million residents of the island, 24,312 have served in the U.S. military (1.8 percent, compared to 6.1 percent nationwide).

The low level of military service stems in part from the high level of foreign-born residents in Manhattan (30 percent, compared with 14.3 percent countrywide), as well as from Manhattanites’ educational status (since the rate of military service declines with attainment of advanced degrees).

Sixty-five percent of Manhattanites have a bachelor’s degree or higher; the national rate is 36 percent.

None of these percentages are surprising. As someone quipped: Manhattan is an island off the coast of America.

Almost a year ago, Jacob Savage penned an essay in the online magazine Compact documenting the gross discrimination against white men in literary publishing. Less than 10 percent of writers below the age of 35 under contract with major publishing houses in Manhattan are white men. John Grisham and Michael Connelly couldn’t get noticed today were they just starting out.

Savage has recently (in Compact) broadened the scope of his research to encompass journalism, academia, and the art world.

The facts are shocking.

“The Disney Writing Program,” which prides itself on placing nearly all its fellows as staff writers, has awarded 107 writing fellowships and 17 directing fellowships since 2016, none to white men.

The same pattern can be found at universities. Since 2022, Brown has hired 45 tenure-track professors in the humanities and social sciences. Just 3 were white American men (6.7 percent). U.C. Irvine has hired 64 tenure-track assistant professors in the humanities and social sciences. Just 3 (4.7 percent) are white men. Of the 59 Assistant Professors in Arts, Humanities, and Social Science appointed at U.C. Santa Cruz between 2020-2024, only two were white men (3 percent).

The same story is true in the art world. The “Big 4” galleries represent 47 millennial artists; just three are white men. At the 2024 Whitney Biennial, which featured 45 millennial artists, zero were white American men. If Jackson Pollock were looking to get noticed today, good luck, big boy.

Here’s the Irony

The systematic elimination of white men from culture-making jobs has not been a conspiracy headed by Ibrahim X. Kendi. Gen-Z Jacob Savage says the much-heralded project to shut out white men under 35 from the corridors leading to power is led by Baby Boomer and Gen-X white men. Whether to protect themselves against D.E.I. censure or because they are true believers, people like Jeffrey Goldberg (editor of “The Atlantic”) have remained loyal to the older white guys who were already in place, while guillotining the careers of younger white men.

Why did we have to wait for a screenwriter shafted by D.E.I. (Savage) to do elementary research about awards, fellowships, and faculty hiring over the last decade?

Where’s the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute, Hoover Institution, Heritage Foundation, The Ethics and Public Policy Center, or American Enterprise Institute? With their huge cushy staffs paid for with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations, why isn’t anybody at these elite conservative think tanks exposing the damning facts about the discrimination that we all know is taking place?

Could it be these institutions are complicit with the wrong-doing?

More Eye-Opening Stats

Growing numbers of employers have grown skeptical of the value of Ivy League pedigrees. They are not the signs of promise these degrees once were, let’s say, 40 years ago. Rose Horowitch recently published a piece in “The Atlantic” giving us more reasons to look askance at a 22-year-old coming at you sporting an Ivy League degree. She’s making reference to the growing percentage of elite students applying for and getting “disability designation” for ADHD, anxiety, and/or depression.

At Brown and Harvard, 22 percent of students are registered as “disabled.” At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent. It’s 38% at Stanford. By comparison, only 3.5 percent of students at public two-year colleges receive such “accommodations.”

That difference speaks volumes. Either rich kids at top universities are more emotionally fragile and psychologically vulnerable than median kids at ordinary schools are (a red flag when it comes to hiring), or they lie and dissemble to get disability status to secure more testing time (which is not a good trait in an employee).

For most entry-level management jobs, go with a 20-year-old kid with a certificate from Santa Barbara City College.

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