The End of History for the Straight White Male

Richard Lindsay thinks so, reflecting on Jason Collins, Tim Tebow, and the ensuing backlash against Chris Broussard and Tim Brando:

We are entering a period in American history when European ancestry, Christianity, and heterosexuality will no longer be the assumed default. I suspect that the past 30 years of resurgence of fundamentalist Christianity and right-wing identity politics will be seen in the course of history as a temporary backlash to the radical social changes unleashed in the 1960’s. The kinds of predictions Harvey Cox made in the 60’s in The Secular City, which many in the 1980’s and 90’s thought needed to be revised or discarded, are happening now, three decades late.

At the risk of sounding shocking, white Christian people are going to have to find a way to have “white pride,” by which I mean they’re going to have to create an identity for themselves that isn’t based on dominating everyone else or measuring everyone else by their standard.

But you don’t have to have agree with the views Brando expressed to have sympathy for the process of grief he’s going through. As a white, middle class, Protestant Christian who came out at the age of 23, I understand what it’s like waking up one day and realizing you must fight for your little plot of dignity in the world.

The process is nothing compared to what people of color, immigrants, women, Muslims, Jews, or anyone else not of pallid complexion with a y chromosome has had to go through. But as human beings we all need a little understanding sometimes. Even the soon-to-be-extinct white Christian male.

Read the rest: Jason Collins, Tim Tebow, and the End of the White Evangelical Male.