There is a disturbance in the Fight. The souls of millions are crying out at once. Women and children, minorities and marginalized… this is our most desperate hour. We need a hero to help us.
We need many heroes. Progressive, white, male heroes.
We need strong, brave men who are willing to do one of the most difficult things a person can do. Who are willing to make a major sacrifice. Who are willing to strap on a cape, pull up their tights, and… just stop talking for a little while.
Hold that thought for now. Swallow that argument. Keep those two cents in your pocket for a bit. To win this battle, we desperately need you to listen.
It’s not that whatever you want to chime in is wrong (though it might be). You may very well be right (or not). But as the national conversation centers around our fully-metastasized sexism, racism, xenophobia, and smorgasbord of bigotry, there is one thing guaranteed to be true about whatever you absolutely feel you need to add to the discussion:
Even if it is new information that is totally on point, it is definitely not as informed by lived experience as whatever the female/black/gay/Muslim/immigrant/whatever person you are talking to has to say.
We need you to be heroic enough to accept that we all share the same liberal vision, and that the best way to achieve it is to let some other perspectives into the spotlight. Listen to them, too, ideally, and try to understand; but even if you can’t, just the simple act of not commandeering the conversation will dramatically alter the course of our history.
If you have a platform, let someone different stand on it. If asked your opinion, refer the questioner to the nearest non-white-male. If called on to speak, amplify the voices of those not invited.
This is a job for super men. It will require the strength to overcome a lifetime of instincts bred by a society that assigns your voice automatic authority. But that is exactly why we need you. You, and only you, are in the unique position to affect great change with mere silence.
How lucky you are to be alive right now, and have this unprecedented power to change the world.
Please heed the call. Show us your progressiveness by allowing different voices to rise above yours. Live up to the greatness society already assumes about you. Be the man your dog already thinks you are.
Help us, Liberal-White-Keno-Men. You’re our only hope.
