White Identity Is Galvanizing the Right
3/19/20261 hr 3 min
The idea that white people — and white men in particular — face discrimination has become something of an obsession on the American right.
It’s a view that my guest this week shares. Jeremy Carl was nominated to a State Department post by the Trump administration, which sparked a lot of controversy. Carl is the author of “The Unprotected Class,” in which he makes the case that white Americans are in danger of becoming “second-class citizens.”
I wanted to know what he thinks constitutes anti-white discrimination and whether focusing on it inevitably leads to white nationalism. After we taped this interview, Carl withdrew his nomination, acknowledging that he lacked enough support to be confirmed.
- 0:00 - Intro
- 01:59 - Jeremy Carl’s trajectory and State Department Nomination
- 05:24 - The Civil Rights Act and rise of anti-white Discrimination
- 12:20 - The impact of immigration on white Americans
- 24:53 - The "radicalization" of D.E.I.
- 37:37 - Carl’s provocative language and controversial tweets
- 51:06 - “White culture” vs. “civic nationalism”
- 01:01:00 - The fours pillars of “Americanness”
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Ross Douthat· Host0:34
[upbeat music] From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. The idea that white people, and white men in particular, face discrimination has become something of an obsession on the American right. The age of DEI transformed affirmative action into something that felt more sharply discriminatory, and now there's a big debate among conservatives. Should they counter progressive identity politics with a colorblind nationalism or treat white culture as something real and embattled and worth organizing around? My guest this week