The New York Times has been profiling stories all year about how boys are in free fall, citing the epidemic of loneliness, lack of college advancement, rise of anger and violence, and CNN's former anchor Don Lemon doubled down on that assessment. And he divided it along racial lines.
In the wake of yet another man opening fire in a mass shooting -- this time in a Michigan church, and following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and a man shooting up an ICE office in Dallas -- Lemon said white men are broken.
"White men, are you okay? Because that is the real issue here," Lemon said, which drew the ire of many who claimed the sentiment was racist.
For his part, Lemon asserted that white men are the common faces behind mass shootings and violence in public places, emphasizing, "This is just the truth, I don’t care if you get mad about it."
“This country keeps waking up to bodies in the pews, blood on the floor, gunfire in public places and the faces behind the trigger looks the same nearly every single time,” Lemon added.
The New York Times last month reported that, "Many boys and men are struggling today, too, in an America once again disrupted by technological change, immigration and growing inequality. Since 2010, suicide rates among young men have risen by a third — they are now higher than they are among middle-aged men. The share of college degrees going to men has fallen to 41 percent, lower than the women’s share in 1970. One in 10 men aged 20 to 24 is effectively doing nothing — neither enrolled in school nor working. That’s twice the rate in 1990."
Still, Lemon's comments received backlash online, with many labeling him a racist for singling out white men. Lemon was ousted from CNN following numerous scandals and controversies.
This time, conservative political commentator Benny Johnson wrote that Lemon had a “complete racist meltdown over white men” while many pointed out the hypocrisy of the fact he's married to a white man, Tim Malone.
Lemon drew ire in 2018 for a similar sentiment, saying, "white men are the biggest terror threat to the United States."
Data varies by source, but according to Statista, white shooters have carried out 84 of 155 mass shootings, or 54% of incidents.
The Times latest story on the subject of America losing its young men says that civic groups embracing young men and bringing them into a fold with a sense of community -- like the Boy Scouts and Big Brothers organizations did in the early 19OOs is the key.
"This male malaise is not just about jobs and diplomas. It is also a crisis of connection, as men and boys are increasingly detached from civic, familial and social life. They are lost, in part because they are lonely: 25 percent of boys and men aged 15 to 34 told Gallup they had experienced loneliness “a lot” on the previous day. One in seven young men reports that he has no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. Two thirds of men under the age of 30 think that 'no one cares if men are okay.'