Here’s a passage in an opinion article about a man brutally murdering someone on a subway in D.C. last week.
“Spires is not a large man. Court documents describe him as a 5-foot-5, 125-pound black man. Did unconscious bias make the teenager seem bigger or make his odds seem better than the nearly dozen people around him?”
Unconscious bias? This was a murderer with a knife, viciously stabbing another man to death – blood everywhere – and the writer has the nerve to ask if unconscious bias kept horrified, possibly traumatized, onlookers from intervening?
If she has the guts to suggest that in writing, she’s got the journalistic duty to approach each passenger and ask them why they didn’t intervene, and try to pry the bias out of them. She wants them to say, “Well, he was black! That’s why I didn’t intervene.” I mean, if she can prove that their bias kept them from intervening, it’ll only strengthen her overall worldview.
After all, this writer makes a living preaching to readers about the sins of white people, aka the ‘privileged,’ and feels her blame-spewing and finger-pointing articles about race are written, to paraphrase her, ‘so people know.’
There is no one more privileged than this writer, who gets paid handsomely to express illogical, refutable opinions without repercussions. I don’t blame her, though – there is no shortage of biased, unqualified opinion writers – entire companies these days rely on these professional trolls.
I blame the editors. It’s lazy and irresponsible to allow this type of writing at an otherwise reputable publication.