Opinion | The Real White Fragility - The New York Times - 0 views
-
In 2001, when I was still attending college, David Brooks wrote an essay for The Atlantic called “The Organization Kid,” in which he spent a lot of time with young Ivy Leaguers and came away struck by their basic existential contentment. Instead of campus rebels, they were résumé builders and accomplishment collectors and apple polishers, distinguished by their serenity, their faux-adult professionalism, their politesse.
-
he was entirely correct that most of my peers believed that meritocracy was fair and just and worked — because after all it seemed to work for us.
-
talking to students and professors, the most striking difference is the disappearance of serenity, the evaporation of contentment, the spread of anxiety and mental illness — with the reputed scale of antidepressant use a particular stark marker of this change.
- ...13 more annotations...