Now, you all know I could write these biased liberal media articles in my sleep. Feminism? No-brainer. Racial Justice? Please. I am as progressive as they come, so very progressive that I don’t even need to read articles written by women and people of color because it would just be them preaching to the choir of me, a privileged liberal white man. Do I support everything they say? No. Of course not. One might even say I respectfully disagree with a lot of their “rights” and am especially incensed when they invoke the term “white man.” But that’s not why I choose not to read such biased articles. It’s because I’m very objective.
Anyway, I think we really need more diversity of opinion in our newsrooms. Specifically, we need more white male conservative voices. I don’t want to be told what I as a leftist want to hear. I want to be told something that makes me feel liberal by comparison so I can feel superior to the person writing it, or maybe even open-minded by considering what this other man who occupies my same demographic and life experience is saying. I need to be challenged like this; no less, no more.
Differing voices are really important to me so long as they don’t call into question my own history in such a way that makes me second-guess my past actions and perception of self. I know who I am — a liberal white man! I tell people this all the time.
“But aren’t you concerned about white male bias?” some liberals sitting in their echo chambers next to their piles of slanted media might ask. To them I say, white male bias doesn’t exist because the default for objectiveness in news media is white male opinions. Besides, if you are focused enough on being objective, you don’t need to consider your own implicit bias. As a supporter of women, I do understand that women are sometimes objective too. But only when they look like models, never call me a “privileged white man,” and disagree with me just enough to be considered feisty but not enough where I begin to wonder what they would think of that thing I did in 2011.
“Oppressed” individuals really need to get out of their bubbles where they’re able to speak freely about things like "bigotry.” I would prefer they spend all of their time talking to extremely conservative white men who hate their very existence and freedoms. I mean, how are these oppressed groups going to make any progress if they focus on building movements by coalescing with each other instead of speaking to my Trump-supporting uncle? Shouldn’t his opinion be considered as important as theirs?
Some would tell you that to address the current state of political affairs we need to focus on justice for the women, people of color, and LGBT communities who are having their rights stripped away every day. But I think the far more important thing is to reach across the aisle to the group that’s even more predominantly straight, white, and male and see what they have to say about things. If we don’t consider their perspective, can we liberal white men really think of ourselves as open-minded, independent thinkers?