Thread by @laurahelmuth

One of the biggest barriers to progress is the fact that most of the people who have succeeded in a given field and have the power to change things think the system works ~just~ ~fine~ the way it is. 1/x

You help run a medical school and you had to spend years of your training sleep deprived? Well, so should new trainees. 2/x

Your have won an award and now your organization wants to change the contributions it recognizes with its awards? Nonsense. The awards recognize the exact right types of accomplishments! 3/x

This problem is acute in news journalism. People in upper management are the ones who embrace the both-sides-ism and appearance-of-a-conflict-of-interest-ism and cult of objectivity that harms their staff and their readers. 4/x

But the system worked for them! They don't recognize their luck, their privilege, or the way their biases (which they think they don't have) make "objective" mean that their journalism is unthreatening to people who have likewise succeeded in their chosen fields. 5/x

And it's not just the abstract system that worked for them — they also succeeded because they ingratiated themselves to the previous generation of people who succeeded by ingratiating themselves to the previous generation of people who succeeded in the system. 6/x

If you are in a position to change things, recognize that you have been reinforcing exclusion, and either fix it or get out of the way. And for goodness sake don't just hire another person who thinks things are great the way they are. 7/7

Anyway I'm just glad @feliciasonmez can do her job again but her treatment has been reprehensible & so many people supported the system that harmed her — after all it works great for them.

Also, if you're in a leadership position? Run your organization in a way that you won't have to worry about what people will say after they leave it