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You can argue about when the contemporary era of white male reaction in American politics began. But surely May 8, 1970, four days after National Guardsmen opened fire on students at Kent State University, deserves a hearing.

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On that day, a student protest in Manhattan against the shootings in Ohio was met by a counteroffensive — the “Hard Hat Riot.” Dozens of construction workers organized, marched and clobbered the protesters, kicking them and beating them with hard hats in what the New York Times described as a “wild noontime melee.”

If the GOP finally begins diversifying its coalition, white males will have to learn to share the big tent.

The construction workers were sick of hippies, sick of leftists, sick of privileged college kids complaining about the war and the draft and the country. Some rioters branched off to Pace University, near City Hall, where they beat up more kids after having been pelted with objects hurled from the school’s roof. Less than three weeks later, President Richard Nixon welcomed a delegation of hard hats to the White House.