The US headlines about white men, college admissions, and the fallout from ending affirmative action startled a lot of people. Stories of declining enrolment and shrinking opportunity for young white men were treated as if they had materialised out of nowhere.

Many found it surprising. I didn’t.

It reminded me of a conversation I had a little over a decade ago on a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to Memphis — one of those brief moments in transit that stays with you because it tells the truth long before the data catches up.

A white man in a bright red shirt with a Confederate flag over his heart sat down next to me. He stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Bill.” As he introduced himself, I looked more closely at his shirt and realised that under the flag it said, “Ole Miss Football”. It was a booster shirt. We chatted. He asked what I did. I told him I led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He blinked, then leaned in with a sincerity I recognised.

“Ben,” he asked, “what’s the purpose of affirmative action?”

I told him the truth: Its purpose is to help dismantle nepotism as the operating system of this country.

He slapped his knee. “Sign me up for that. But tell me this: What good does that do for the boys in my family?”

Then he told me what he meant. The men in his family had been, as he put it, “in and out of prison since we came here on the wrong side of the Georgia penal colony”. He was the lone exception — a gifted high school football player who earned a scholarship to “Ole Miss”.

A coach introduced him to business leaders in Memphis. That was his way out. The booster shirt wasn’t a provocation. It was a keepsake from the only open door his family ever had.

Bill’s story is not the one America tells about white men. But it is the story millions are living. And it mirrors something larger happening across this country.

For years now researchers have documented serious headwinds facing working-class American men: wages that stagnate or fall, especially for men without college degrees; fewer men in college even as women’s enrolment rises; more men detached from the labour force; rising suicide and overdose deaths in many hard-hit communities; and marriage becoming less common and less stable for men with the weakest economic prospects.

White working-class men feel this acutely. But they are not alone.

White men may have made the headlines, but similar trends are affecting black, Latino, Native, and Asian men — especially those from poor and working-class backgrounds. In today’s economy, class and education now do as much work as race in deciding whether a man will be seen as “marriageable”, employable, and likely to climb beyond the station of his birth.

So if you’re wondering why a black civil rights leader cares about the struggles of white men, the answer is simple: In a democracy, you cannot fix poverty for anyone unless you fix it for everyone. Every major leap forward in opportunity in this country has depended on multiracial coalitions. Progress comes when we face the full truth — not when we ignore parts of it.

Which brings us to the conversation we are actually having. Or rather, not having.

It’s time to readjust our thinking about white men, college admissions, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). The left and the right have both turned this into a culture war when what we really need is a reality check.

On the right, the headlines became a grievance weapon — proof, some claim, that diversity efforts were out to “replace” white men. On the left, the reaction was defensive, as if acknowledging hardship among white families would somehow undermine the fight for racial justice.

Neither response had much to do with the truth. And if we’re wondering why we can’t seem to have a real conversation about opportunity, we should start when political scientist Martin Gilens warned us decades ago. By portraying poverty disproportionately with black faces, American media helped make the white poor and much of the working class invisible. That distortion robbed us of the ability to see the full picture of suffering and the full map of shared struggle.

When entire communities are invisible, their pain doesn’t get counted. Their boys don’t get counted. Their decline doesn’t make the front page until it shows up as a political shock.

That invisibility hurts everyone. It hurts white families like Bill’s. It hurts black and brown families navigating the same broken ladders. It hurts the communities trying to build stable futures for their children.

Before we talk solutions, we need full visibility — a willingness to see all who are struggling, not just the ones who fit our old narratives.

And yes, part of that conversation may involve something like affirmative action for working-class families — including white men. Not the caricatured version people argue about on cable news, but the real kind colleges have long used: giving a boost to students from low-income families, high-poverty neighbourhoods, under-resourced schools, and overlooked rural counties — from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to remote parts of Alaska.

Race-based affirmative action sat alongside these class- and place-based efforts; it never replaced them. And even after the Supreme Court’s decision, colleges can still use class-based affirmative action because it recognises a basic truth: A child’s chances in life are shaped powerfully by zip code, wealth, and opportunity.

The headlines surprised many because they showed only one part of the story. It’s time we tell the whole one. Only then can we rebuild opportunity — for Bill, for the boys in his family, and for every family fighting for a fair shot.

Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and a former national president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Ben Jealous