The Only Group You’re Allowed to Discriminate Against

At some point, discrimination shifted from being seen as a scandal to being used as a strategy.

This change happened openly, not by accident. The language sounded moral, and the systems seemed impossible to avoid. It showed up in corporate America, universities, media, medicine, and tech. The same thing kept happening: to rebalance outcomes, a group had to be pushed aside.

White men became that group.

As Compact magazine recently documented in their report “The Lost Generation”, this shift coincided with a sharp demographic reversal across elite institutions beginning in the mid-2010s, when white men moved from being overrepresented to rapidly underrepresented in new hiring and admissions pipelines, and just within a single decade.

Ben Shapiro has been blunt about this shift, calling it one of the most consequential cultural changes of the last decade. Not because white men are uniquely virtuous or uniquely victimized, but because they became the only demographic it was still socially acceptable to exclude.

When merit was no longer the main focus

For much of modern American history, the main idea was simple: judge people as individuals, reward good performance, and expand opportunities without unfair advantages. This ideal was not always followed perfectly, but it was the standard most people said they believed in.

That standard fell apart when institutions started focusing on equal outcomes instead of equal treatment.

As Compact notes, this transition was not driven by new evidence of discrimination, but by a moral redefinition of fairness itself. Outcome gaps were no longer something to be studied or explained. They became proof of injustice by default.

When outcomes became the main measure of fairness, someone had to be pushed aside. As Shapiro said on his show, “If your moral system demands identical results, then discrimination isn’t a bug. It’s the mechanism.”

The study nobody wanted to talk about

A well-known study of hiring patterns in top industries over the past decade shows this change clearly. The data revealed that in fields that strongly adopted DEI policies, the number of white men did not just slowly decrease as more people joined the pipeline. Instead, their numbers dropped quickly and much more than others, especially in entry-level and early-career jobs.

Compact highlights that in several prestige sectors, white men went from comprising a clear majority of junior hires in the early 2010s to a minority by the early 2020s, a pace of change that cannot be explained by demographics alone.

This difference is important.

This wasn’t about older executives retiring. It was about making it harder to get started. Fellowships, internships, junior roles, and training programs—the places where careers begin—became less accessible.

As the article observes, “Gatekeeping moved downstream.” The real exclusion happened before résumés ever reached senior leadership.

In multiple sectors, internal hiring documents openly described some jobs as “diverse-only” or said that leaders were “prioritizing non-white, non-male candidates.” There were no slurs—just official policy.

Shapiro summed it up plainly: “When you see the same demographic falling off a cliff across unrelated industries at the same time, that’s not coincidence. That’s ideology at work.”

How exclusion learned to speak politely

This isn’t the kind of discrimination people usually expect. There are no signs on doors or clear bans—just new language.

“We need to correct the imbalance.”
“We need to diversify the room.”
“We need perspectives we don’t already have.”
“We’re being intentional about representation.”

Compact describes this as “managerial discrimination,” where exclusion is enforced through process rather than prejudice, and where intent is replaced by outcomes as the moral standard.

Each of these phrases sounds reasonable on its own. But together, they act as a filter. If there are already “too many” people of a certain type, that person is not considered—not because he isn’t qualified, but because the numbers say he’s not needed.

Shapiro noted the irony. “We were told for decades not to judge people by race or sex. Then the institutions flipped overnight and said judging by race and sex is the highest form of morality.”

Why millennials felt the shock first

The backlash didn’t begin with older executives. It affected younger men the most.

White male millennials grew up with the idea that everyone should be treated equally. They were taught to be fair, decent, work hard, not blame others, and not ask for special treatment.

But when they started their careers, they found that group identity mattered more than individual achievement. They weren’t told they had failed—they were told they didn’t qualify.

Compact notes that this cohort now shows unusually high levels of disengagement from elite institutions, declining trust in professional advancement systems, and a sharp drop in participation in fields that once rewarded merit and credentials.

This led to a particular kind of anger—not entitlement or resentment toward others, but a loss of trust in the rules themselves.

As Shapiro warned, “If people stop believing the system is neutral, they don’t become kinder. They become tribal.”

The prestige problem

This change didn’t end with hiring. It spread to awards, media coverage, promotions, and social status. Once institutions started treating identity as a qualification, everything else changed too.

Compact points out that prestige itself became a form of redistribution, with honors, fellowships, and visibility increasingly allocated to satisfy representational goals rather than excellence.

People began to wonder quietly: Was this person promoted for their skills, or because they fit a certain category? This kind of doubt hurts trust for everyone, even those DEI is meant to help.

Meritocracy doesn’t just lead to better results—it also creates legitimacy. When that legitimacy is lost, institutions lose their authority.

The trap of outcome-based morality

The biggest problem with this system is that it can never say the work is finished.

If justice means equal outcomes, then the work never ends. Any difference is seen as bias, and any return to old patterns is seen as sabotage. The only answer is more intervention.

As Compact observes, this framework “requires constant pressure, constant correction, and constant scapegoats.”

That’s why Shapiro calls this way of thinking unstable. “There is no natural stopping point. There is only pressure.”

And pressure always needs somewhere to go. Right now, white men have been the easiest group to target, the least protected, and the most acceptable to blame.

What this does to a country

A society that accepts “acceptable discrimination” doesn’t become more fair. It becomes more suspicious.

People stop trusting institutions and stop believing that excellence matters. They begin to see every success or failure as a result of group identity. This creates lasting resentment for everyone.

Shapiro’s warning is not just about protecting one group. It’s about defending the idea that individuals are more important than categories.

The only way out

The answer is not to reverse the hierarchy or create new favored groups. That only makes the cycle go faster.

The solution is simple, even if it’s unpopular.

Judge the individual.
Hire the best candidate.
Promote the best performer.
Stop treating demographic spreadsheets as moral scorecards.

You can create more opportunities without fixing the results. You can recruit widely without quietly leaving people out. You can aim for fairness without giving up on merit.

If you decide that some discrimination is good, you’ve already lost the argument. You’re just putting off the moment when everyone sees that the rules don’t apply equally anymore.

And when people realize this, the harm doesn’t just affect one group—it spreads to everyone.