How Masculinity Fuels Two Americas of Violence
From City Blocks to Country Roads, Young Men Are Influenced by Similar Pressures
Thanks for being a subscriber to Let's Not Be Trash. If you’re new here, we (mostly me, Evan J. Mastronardi and Karina Maria Write about patriarchy, politics, race, culture, music, and ruminations. The goal is to discuss important issues in a digestible and relatable way because nobody wants to read a TED Talk.
If you’re new, please consider subscribing. If you’re already on the list and have a few coins, consider upgrading to a paid subscriber. If you have commitment issues but want to contribute, you can buy me a coffee.
If you like my substack and want to discover other great writers, check out this directory from Marc Typo, The Cook-Out.
To Be a White Man Going Nowhere
In 2019, on a quiet backroad in Georgia, a young man known as “James” participated in the sacrifice of a ram. A handful of men from The Base, a neo-Nazi militia, initiated him that day, mixing LSD-fueled pagan rituals with firearms training in the woods. James, a restless rural youth raised in an environment steeped in grievance, had been recruited online by extremists who promised purpose, belonging, and a mission. His story is not an outlier, but a glimpse into a radicalization pipeline fed by economic decay, cultural isolation, and a hunger for an outdated version of masculine identity.
In rural America, economic decline has been both steady and visible. Between 2000 and 2022, the United States lost approximately 4.7 million manufacturing jobs, with small towns and rural regions absorbing a disproportionate share of that contraction.
Sawmills, rail yards, meatpacking plants and mines have shuttered, while skilled trades once tied to those industries have seen sharp contractions. Logging and commercial fishing fleets have thinned; grain elevators stand empty in towns they once sustained.
For young men in these communities, the work that once offered both income and identity has largely been replaced by temporary gigs, warehouse shifts, or long-haul delivery services that lack comparable prestige or security.
Traditional, often conservative, values in these regions have long defined manhood in terms of bread-winning: the ability to provide materially for one’s family and to anchor a household’s stability. In such a framework, economic decline strikes not only at income but at identity: losing a job is not simply a financial setback, it is a perceived failure to fulfill the central masculine role.
Recent studies on rural male unemployment show that job loss correlates with higher rates of depression, substance abuse, and political radicalization, in part because it destabilizes the very role through which many men measure their worth. Without comparable avenues to reclaim that standing, the frustration born of economic displacement can harden into resentment, making alternative arenas that promise status, purpose, and recognition especially appealing.
I’ve lived in towns like the ones James grew up in. And I know what it’s like to grow up alongside young men who measure themselves by how much they can provide, and feel like failures when they fall short. One of my closest friends and I grew up in nearly identical circumstances: same schools, same activities, same hours spent talking about our hopes and dreams. I went one way; he didn’t. He ended up failing out of college, sank into far-right ideology, and now works a job doing the kind of skilled labor that keeps entire neighborhoods running but earns him little respect.
When I hear about him from mutual friends, I can feel the anger he carries, like he missed some invisible marker of manhood. It’s not the work he does that makes him feel small; it’s a culture that told him he was supposed to be a provider, a success story, a man who “made it.” Masculinity shaped both of our lives. We just ended up on opposite sides of what it says makes a man worthy.
To Be a Black Man Held Back By the System
On the other side of the coin, Black Americans have been forced to navigate a country that refuses to acknowledge the sin of slavery, prejudice, and apartheid. And then are told that we have no excuse to not be successful. This lip service hasn’t just been confusing and disrespectful, it has been demoralizing. While not every Black person lives under the boot of extreme poverty, many are trying to make it in communities that are deeply underfunded, over-policed, and constantly stripped of resources. A 2024 report shows that majority Black school districts receive far less funding than their white counterparts, leading to millions of Black boys and girls attending schools with subpar resources and support for their education.
That lack of funding and education impacts job opportunities and manifests into a huge reduction of economic potential for Black men in the present and future. According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve, the unemployment rate stands at 4.2% for most Americans, but for Black men over the age of 20 it’s at 7.2% and climbing. Following the COVID pandemic, Black men continue to face disproportionate challenges finding employment compared to other groups, according to the Center for American Progress. For many of them, there is no bright future to look forward to, only a cold world that tells them that their value is tied to the ability to produce. And since there are not enough jobs that allow them that dignity, they must be worth nothing.
I grew up in East New York Brooklyn in the 90’s. My community was full of Black men and boys navigating the schizophrenic reality of the United States. A country that told us that anything was possible if we worked hard enough, but then flooded our communities with aggressive policing and drug task force agents. I have been called out of my name by people whose salary was paid out from my tax dollars. In their eyes, Black men and boys were nothing more than a waste to society; my underfunded community reinforced those ideas. It’s under those conditions that I, like many other Black boys, looked for other ways to feel important, to feel powerful. That’s where gangs came in.
I was 13 when I tried to join the Bloods. I didn’t do it to terrorize my community. I didn’t do it for the money, although that was appealing. I looked to join that gang because its leaders were the only example of strong Black men I had available. For many Black boys, gangs were our refuge: they were a community of people who understood our struggle, felt the same outrage and hurt we felt, and had a plan to do something about it. Many of us turned that anger, abandonment, and confusion into violence, hurting ourselves, our neighbors and our brothers.
But with nothing else to do, and nowhere else to turn to, what else were we supposed to do? The Black Male experience can feel isolating, as if we are the only one suffering, and that no one gives a damn about us, but that’s not true. What’s true is that we are not alone, and our collective strength has always been the key to breaking these cycles.
The Boys We’re Losing
Stanley Fritz and Ryan W. Powers
When we talk about the struggles of men in modern society, whether they end up in militias or gangs, we often act as if their experiences have nothing in common. But they do. Both are rooted in disenfranchisement: for white men, it’s grappling with the loss of status and security they were taught to expect; for Black men, it’s navigating a world built to deny them safety, opportunity, and dignity from the start. Both stories are shaped by the same script: masculinity defined by dominance, worth tied to power.
White supremacy is what makes those stories diverge. It explains why one group’s rage is fueled by the loss of a promise, while the other’s is forged in the reality of systemic exclusion. Patriarchy gives men a common measure of worth, but white supremacy dictates who is positioned to claim power and who is targeted by it. Militias and gangs reflect the same desperation for belonging, control, and respect, but the conditions that drive them - and the consequences - are not equal.
If we are serious about dismantling the shared roots of patriarchy, we must first confront the racism that divides and defines these experiences. You cannot address one without the other. Any solution that ignores this will keep disenfranchised men firmly divided by race and trapped in cycles of resentment and violence, always seeking to vilify the other instead of recognizing their shared struggle and dismantling the power structures that harm them both. Only by naming and confronting both forces together can we build a world where every boy grows up with dignity, and the American dream is more than just a broken promise.
Today’s post is a collaboration with
, who writes an incredible Substack on dissent, democracy, and the law. You can check out his work here. | A guest post by
|
These are great pieces. I really like the point about militias and gangs being the end result of related yet distinct processes. One piece I often don’t hear talked about is the destruction/decline of the labor movement and it’s part in the ‘crisis of masculinity’ Unions, often being both a place of unity and purpose for men.
All of this. And as a Black Southerner, I knew both sets of boys and I worry about them both, because this system is failing the Earth and it’s bout to open all the way up and eat us all!