The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: The Generation That Got Wiped Out: DEI’s War on White Men

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

DEI killed meritocracy—and white men in America have paid the price. Victor Davis Hanson breaks down a recent, controversial article from Compact Magazine, which examines how white males have been increasingly excluded from fields like entertainment, journalism, and academia over the past several decades. Hanson explores the effects of early affirmative action, post-George Floyd hiring practices, and who bears responsibility for these changes on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “I do blame the older white hierarchy, mostly liberal professors, liberal journalists, liberal directors, liberal actors, liberal screenwriters. They all had nice cushy jobs. They earned them. Then they decided in their utopian generosity that they were going to admit people into their guilds without the same criterion that they had had because it made them feel better. “In other words, they didn't accept Tom Sowell's or Shelby Steele's advice or Jason Riley's that says, when you do that, you're going to encourage mediocrity and opportunist, and you're going to deprecate the work of African Americans or Hispanics that are very talented. But that's what you're going to do just to gratify your own sense of ego and shame. And that's exactly what happened.” (0:00) Introduction (0:21) Compact Article (0:57) Affirmative Action and Its Impact (2:50) Meritocracy Loss (4:12) Blame and Responsibility (5:54) Consequences of Lower Standards (7:07) Conclusion We need your help to ensure The Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth. Support The Daily Signal’s work today by becoming a Signal Elite Supporter.    Your tax-deductible monthly gift will help:  👉Help us provide free access to Victor Davis Hanson’s video commentary 👉Fund investigative reporting on the stories the liberal media will not cover  👉Counter the liberal media's lies   👉Keep The Daily Signal free to the public  http://dailysignal.com/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our generous Signal elite supporters make this video possible. Please consider joining today. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. There's been a quite a controversial article by one Jacob Savage in the conservative magazine compact. In it, he describes the destruction of the whole generation career-wise of white males, particularly in the entertainment industry, screenwriting, journalism, the humanities, academia. And his thesis is tri-part. He says that traditionally white males had dominated these fields as they did others, and that was a part of demography, after all, until about 1916.

65 or 70, 90 percent of the country was so-called white. But as immigration increased and there was more emphasis on feminism, civil rights, the white male hierarchy decided to help people who otherwise would not be encouraged to apply to these marquee jobs. And this was sort of a proto-affirmative action. And then it was reified by the government. And so we saw the beginning in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s of affirmative action. And this reduced the number of white males from their demographic, from being overrepresented, let's say 70% when their demographic now is 35, down to by the millennium proportionality. There was no disproportionate demographics. They were more or less proportionate in screenwriting and writing and movie scripts, etc. Right before,

And then especially after George Floyd, there was something, I guess we would call it reparations or repertory hiring, admissions. In my case, I watch Stanford University go down to 9% white males were admitted to their freshman class, even though that demographic was about 35% of the population. And this radically changed journalism, screenwriting, academia. And as Mr. Savage points out, some of the exclusionary actions were outright and on a bash, I would call it, racism. He doesn't. He says prejudicial behavior. So you would get down to 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 percent white males.

That meant it was almost no opportunity. And instead, women and minorities were hired. He ends the article by suggesting that if you get rid of meritocracy and all of the of these fields, forget about the tribal affiliations of those who were in them. They did have Merocratic standards. So I guess I came away from this article thinking, if you don't think the movies are very good today, the Star Wars franchise has gone downhill, the James Bond franchise has gone downhill, the entertainment at the halftime shows are pretty bad, Disneyland is not very welcoming anymore. You know the scenario.

It's because we destroyed standards and we replaced them with tribal chauvinism. Where I think some of you are going to disagree with this very powerful and well-written article is that he allots no anger, no blame. He says that the white male hierarchy that implemented these changes on another generation, i.e. his generation, is not to blame. And the people who took advantage of these repertory or race-based or gender-based hiring should not be faulted either. They just took advantage of a welcoming position. And then rather than being defined, he sort of shrugs his shoulders and says, I told my children maybe I didn't succeed.

It was kind of tragic. I do blame the older white hierarchy, mostly liberal professors, liberal journalists, liberal directors, liberal actors, liberal screenwriters, they all had nice cushy jobs. They earned them. Then they decided in their utopian generosity that they were going to admit people into their guilds without the same criterion that they had had because it made them feel better. In other words, they didn't accept Tom Soles or Shelby Steele's advice or Jason Riley's that says, When you do that, you're going to encourage mediocrity and opportunist, and you're going to deprecate the work of African Americans or Hispanics that are very talented.

But that's what you're going to do just to gratify your own sense of ego and shame, and that's exactly what happened. So I do blame that group, because all they had to do was, say, they could have said, we have to have a radical change at Disney Pictures. We have to have a radical change at sitcoms. We have to have a radical change in screenplays. And because we have seven white males in the journalism room and we're all 70, we're making great money, one of us is going to have to retire or two and give our slots to other white males that are young. And then we can hire additional ones.

They didn't do that. It was all, I'm going to experiment on these guinea pigs without any, any exposure of my title, my job, my salary, my benefits, and they destroyed a whole series of genres. The other thing that I would say is I do blame the people who took advantage of that, especially those who knew they were not qualified, and then to stay in those positions when they did not have the meritocratic criteria, they had to perpetuate the idea of systematic racism. What do I mean by that? Anybody, to take one example, who listened to Joy Reid on MSNBC, the readout or whatever her show was, knew that she was, A, not truthful, B, paranoid, C, hypocritical,

D, ignorant. I don't care where she went to school or what kind of degree she got. She was not qualified for that job. She tanked all of their ratings. People did not want to watch her. And I don't think that she was an innocent victim. I think she took advantage of that. that goodwill, especially when she was supercharged after the death of George Floyd, to take advantage of that situation and to voice, I think, opinions that were objectively racism. So not everybody, but I do think people took advantage of this system. What did he end up with? Mr. Savage, he sort of said, this was so unfair and so tragic.

We lost such talent. It was so unfair. Yes. But I would urge all of you listeners to read a little essay. response by Jeremy Carl. He said, no, no, that's not, you've got the diagnosis right, but you don't have the therapy right. We don't just shrug our shoulders and say, that was unfair and it's tragic and millions of lives were destroyed. We fight back, and that's what Donald Trump has done with the destruction of DEI. And Jeremy Carl said, it's racism, whether it's white on black or black

or white or white on minority or minority on white. It doesn't matter. You don't address a perceived injustice by creating a greater injustice. You don't destroy the lives of a whole generation of people for the goodwill of your own spirit or something to make you feel good. No, these people were culpable. They did great damage and they have to be held accountable. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe. to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com

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