Chicago Mayor Mori Lightfoot's Racial Discrimination Against White Journalists

Originally published on Publish0x.

Introduction

On May 19, Chicago Mayor Mori Lightfoot announced that she will only accept one-on-one interviews with minority reporters. Any white journalist who wants to give an interview with the mayor is out of luck. This decision was inspired by her being “by the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of Chicago media outlets, editorial boards, the political press corps, and yes, the City Hall press corps specifically” during her campaign.

On Twitter, she double downed on her announcement, stating that she wanted to "break the status quo". She iterated that "diversity and inclusion [are] imperative across all institutions".

Just because the proportion of journalists are majority white, it doesn't necessarily mean there is a pro-white bias or an anti-minority bias.

"Diversity and inclusion are", Mayor, not "is".

I'm not sure how excluding a group of people constitutes as "doing better"...

Lightfoot Called Out on Racial Discrimination

As you can see, her tweets got ratio'ed pretty hard. The majority of the responses to her justification criticized her for her racial discrimination. Those who defended the mayor also got ratio'ed.

Some responses critical of Ligthfoot's statement, calling her out on racial discrimination.

Minorities did not hesitate to express their disagreement, too. In fact, a Latino reporter, Gregory Pratt, vouched for white journalists and asked Lightfoot's office to rescind the condition. The office refused and as a result, he cancelled his scheduled interview. His decision drew a lot of praise on Twitter.

Closing Thoughts

Lightfoot's decision to racially discriminate against white journalists is textbook racism. Her advocacy for "diversity and inclusion" is hypocritical. Last time I checked, excluding people of a certain race is the total opposite of diversity and inclusion.

What also baffles me is her very first thought when meeting with the press and media outlets is their "overwhelming whiteness", rather than the employees' credentials. I published an article about how the Oscars should focus more on meritocracy than on identity politics a while back and the same arguments apply here.

When it comes to journalism, what matters is if the journalist can report events accurately and honestly. If the reporter is holding an interview, then I care more about if he or she asks relevant questions, does not slant to any side, and avoids complex question fallacies. Note how the skills and qualities I listed here have no relation to skin color. Unfortunately, with Lightfoot, she only cares about the journalist's skin color.

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