Morning Wire - White Men Can’t Work? Inside the UK’s Workplace Discrimination Backlash

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

Award-winning journalist Tim Samuels discusses his new series White Men Can’t Work, which explores claims of workplace discrimination against white men in the UK. He shares powerful stories and polling data which reveal a growing sense of professional marginalization. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

JWT had a reputation for being white, straight, British, middle class, and they wanted to obliterate it. That was a highly acclaimed advertising industry veteran who found himself abruptly fired because of his identity, being a white male. The interview is part of a new series highlighting the growing number of white men in the UK that feel they've been actively discriminated against in the workplace. That includes more than a third of young men who's... say they've lost out on promotions and other opportunities because of their race and gender. In this episode, we talked to the journalist and award-winning documentary maker behind the series about the trend and why he believes it's crucial to call attention to the issue in the UK now. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

It's Saturday, May 31st, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is Tim Samuels, host of White Men Can't Work, a new podcast series. Tim, thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure. Good to see, John. So your new series highlights what you call the hidden scale of discrimination against white men in the workplace. What do you think has allowed this trend to grow so rapidly and yet remain largely unspoken for so long in the UK? I think one of the things is it's incredibly hard to speak about this without being cancelled, cans, labelled as a racist, written off as a sort of far-right loon pot.

But, journalistically, I felt this is a subject that someone, has to raise their head above the parapet on because I think there is so much unsaid and untold anxiety that men are feeling in today's workplace. There's a level of discrimination and these diversity DEI schemes don't work. They don't even benefit women or people from minority backgrounds. And I've spent a lot of time over the years talking about men and mental health in my documentaries. And I just kept hearing from guys that I'm having a really hard time at work because I'm a guy. My career's really taking a hit. I'm terrifying and going to say the wrong thing.

But I can't say any of this out loud. And I just thought, you know, good journalism requires airing things which are important. And I'm going to probably cop it for this. You know, I'm going to be labelled as something I'm not. But I just thought it's an important story that we do need to tell. Yeah, I wanted to highlight your background a little bit more here. You were a reporter for the BBC. You've won awards for your documentary work in the past. Is this a major risk for you then highlighting this issue? What was strong enough to sort of drive you to pursue this despite the risk? Yeah, I mean, I think it is. I've spent most of my life doing the BBC. I spent a bit time doing Nat Geo in the States. More recently, I did the free press covering October the 7th attacks in Israel. So most of my work has been through, I guess, what you would classify as something. mainstream media. And I think I'm running into a minefield. No matter how sort of nuanced you try and be and balanced, I think by just even saying, hey, we need to talk about white men, some people

are going to look at me and say, God, you've changed. Whereas I don't think I have. You know, I've always believed in, I guess, classic values like fairness, free speech, free speech, meritocracy. and as a journalist calling out when billions are being spent and not working, when people are suffering and being discriminated against, even if those people who are now being discriminated against, as odd as it might sound, are some white guys. You know, there are people who I've interviewed who've directly lost their jobs because they're white men or have been sacked over crazy microaggressions. And this isn't to say things didn't need to change. You know, of course racism and sexism. does need addressing, you know, and John, over the years I've done quite campaigning journalism. I've worked undercover in Northern Ireland to expose racism there against the Muslim and Chinese communities. I was attacked on camera. I've talked to the EPA about why so many black people in Alabama are living next to toxic sites. But at the same time, this does need calling out. And it doesn't make you racist to say that there are millions of men our data has found

who are walking around too anxious. to speak freely at work, who say that their careers have been severely hampered, this needs calling out. It just has to be called out. And from a mental health point of view, you know, we found there are 8 million guys in this country who say that their mental health has taken a hit because of DEI. You know, in US terms, it would be equivalent to 30, 40 million guys

saying that their mental health has taken a hit. suicide is a terrible problem with men. Work is so important to men's identity and self-esteem. We have to talk about this stuff without it being labeled as kind of racist or crackpot. Now, in one of the interviews I watched that you conducted, the gentleman that you talked to, he was in the ad industry. He said exactly that. He said his identity was really wrapped up in his career. He was a top-level professional, won lots of accolades for his work.

And it took a major toll on him psychologically, even though. and physically. Can you speak to that? What did experts tell you about the impact that this kind of cancellation has? Yeah, I mean, John, for better or worse, we're kind of hunter-gatherers at heart. You know, as men in particular, we are wired to work. That's how we get our income, our identity, our status, our sense of being men, for better or worse, is tied up with that. When jobs become vulnerable, that has a huge impact. In the 2008 recession, there was a spike of about 10,000 male suicides in North America and Europe after that. You know, we put all our eggs in the work basket, and that's really dangerous.

And what DEI is doing is this making us feel incredibly vulnerable about this thing, which is so important to who we are. And in some cases, Chaz, the advertising guy that you mentioned, who was working at one of the world's biggest ad agencies. And they decided post Me Too that, oh, there's companies that's a service. bit too white, it's a bit too male, it's a bit too sort of middle class and British. And he and four colleagues thought, that doesn't sound good for us. And he'd won the top advertising awards in the country. And so he emailed HR and said, well, you know, what does this mean? And within

days, all five of them were sacked. And they took them to an industrial tribunal. And the judge ruled that they had been sacked simply because they were men. They were sacked because they were sacked because a man. And then the social media mob came for him. And it reached the point where he was diagnosed with trauma. He's moved to the other side of the world. And when I spoke to him, he said he still physically shakes when he thinks about what happened to him. So this is very deep trauma. And he's not the only person. There's a theme that runs through all five parts of white men can't work. the guys who've been on the wrong end of this end up with really serious depressive issues. And there's a fascinating insight from a therapist with interview who says that when you kind of get cancelled,

when you're cast out, it's the ultimate way for evolution to put you on edge. You're being ostracized. Traditionally, you know, we would have lived as, you know, in our bands and our tribes. And when you're cast out, that means you're vulnerable to other tribes. to dinosaurs, to lions, to anything. So it's very, very destabilizing to be ostracized. And people are being ostracized for the smallest things. There was a lecturer at a university who, you know,

he wasn't getting on great with some of his colleagues because he was questioning some of the orthodoxy. And they decided to sort of get rid of him. And they collected microaggressions that he was accused of, including talking about the male and female ends of cables. You know, if anyone's ever had a cable, there's a mail and a female. Go on Amazon. It's what you call.

He was told he was being sexist by referring to that terminology, and he was kicked out of his job. He spiraled. He ended up on antidepressants. So there's a kind of lack of humanity and a lack of empathy for men, which runs through all this. It's interesting. You're highlighting two elements or sort of prongs to this attack on white men,

professional, but also social, cultural attacks. So even if a judge determines that you were wrongfully terminated by bringing it up, you're punished socially. Do you see any progress on that front at all in the UK? We're seeing some major blowback here against DEI in the US. What about in the UK now? I would say by and large, DEI is alive and kicking over here. I think some of the big companies where they are US facing have pulled back a bit. I think a number of others have doubled down and say, okay, we don't want to, we think this is important. And the institutes of directors over here found that, you know, a vast majority of big companies are still running DEI programs. It's still very much alive and kicking in academia. And police forces here and our National Health Service are still

insisting on whiteness training, even though all the data shows that these courses backfire. There's a really interesting Harvard professor, Frank Dobbin, who we've been speaking to, who's looked at data sets for 8 million people who've been through DEI courses. And the studies show that when you run these courses, it actually has a negative effect. It doesn't help women. It doesn't help people from minority backgrounds. Because you're essentially saying to white blokes, hey, by the way, you're all unconsciously racist and you're all privileged. And the natural reaction when someone calls you racist isn't to say, well, God, John, that's a brilliant point.

I never thought of that. I am so racist. It's to say, well, F you. I don't want to be part of this. So, you know, I go back to the, you know, the original thing being... 60% of the ventures on Amazon, come to vendor-independent like sack magic. Hello, here Camille of Sack Magic. Our compresses chode-fraud are fabriced here even, with the tissue that we're in the oil and the avion

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we're grandie. Trouve of little enterprises like the other on Amazon.ca. Of course we should tackle discrimination where it exists. There are just smarter ways to do that

with mentoring, with work, experience with skills, training, companies, not by running these courses, which ultimately are inspired by a cultural form of Marxism and crudely divide the world into oppressed an oppressor. And if you're white and male, you are automatically an oppressor, regardless of what your background is, if you could be working class, you could be blue color, it doesn't matter. And billions, $40 billion or so a year is spent on these courses. And for what? They make things worse for those that's meant to help, and they demonize men. But to say,

this. Whoa. You know, look at you. You're a crazy sort of lunatic for even questioning this. So in the end, it's really a shortcut, an easy way to feel like you're addressing the problem, whereas, as you mentioned, the long-term comprehensive approach really takes more effort, requires training people, changing cultural attitudes, building better infrastructure. All that takes a long time. This is a nice easy solution that doesn't work at all in the end, like you say. I wanted to look into some of the polling numbers. You can see. You could look into some of the polling numbers. commissioned a group JL partners to look into this issue. Can you tell us about those results? Yeah. So, I mean, you know, really top pollsters here. What they found is, I sort of found

quite staggering, really, that almost half of men, 46% of white guys say they self-censor because it could affect their careers. And this doesn't mean that they're dying to be racist and they're self-censuring. These are people who are saying they won't give honest but respectful feedback to a colleague at work, or they won't risk making a joke. These are guys who are literally sitting on their hands in meetings, so they think, if I speak out, I'm going to be seen as some sort of boorish, white, oppressive male. A third of young guys, 36% of guys under 34, so they've lost out on a promotion or other opportunities, because of people. because they're white men. So these are young guys, probably in their late 20s,

who've maybe only gone for one or two promotions in their life. But they feel that already they're being discriminated against. Most, you know, nearly half of everyone thinks that the strong agreement, the next generation are going to be worse off. One in three white men feel that they're the least valued workers in the workplace. And then there was that sort of mental health toll that I was talking about. And as I said, you know, in US terms, you know, 11 or 8 million guys here, it's equivalent to sort of 30, 40 million guys in America who are walking around, anxious that they can say or do the wrong thing that's going to get them sacked.

And these are guys who, I don't think would have any problems with schemes that genuinely worked, that address discrimination, you know, without some kind of quick fix overnight that doesn't work. but they're really terrible the workplace has become a hostile environment for a lot of guys final question since you've launched this series have you experienced

any blowback professionally or personally I've had two reactions John one has been from some people I know who say what the hell are you doing have you thought about this to which I say actually watch the documentary watch the

watch it and tell me if there's anything you disagree within that rather than just go with some social media, microattention nonsense. But I've also had people contact me and say, thank you for raising this. I can't say this out loud, but I've had a really hard time. You know, I feel like I've been discriminated against. And I've also had some women get in touch with me, say,

I'm not being allowed to say this in my job, but I've seen this happen. I've seen things happen to white men. A woman wrote to me this week, said I've seen things happen to white men, which if they happen to women or people of colour, would have been deemed as completely unacceptable. And she was very seen in the creative industries here.

So it's divisive. You know, this stuff's always divisive. But I, you know, I'm trying to sort of respectfully shed a light, journalistically on something which I really do think needs addressing because it's not helping anyone. It's not helping women. It's not helping people of color. And it certainly is how not helping men. And mental health is so fragile in this world that we do need to look after our men as much as everyone else. Even the white men. Tim, thanks so much for talking with us. And where can folks watch the show? Thank you. And it's going to be on YouTube and it's on all the podcast platforms and

it's five parts. And we'd love people to get behind it because a lot of people really are not that into free speech these days. That was Tim Samuels, host of the series White Men Can't Work, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.