I think some of y'all were thinking I was speaking euphemistically when I said that there were white supremacists in "mainstream" newsrooms. I was not.

I'm not sure how else you describe someone who refuses to speak to journalists of color in their own newsroom even when because someone fucked up and hired them even though their bigotry is known, they're their direct report.

Let me introduce you to the concept of the missing stair: it's a metaphor for a person within a social group who many know is dangerous / untrustrworthy or otherwise has to be "managed", but who they work around by trying to quietly warn others rather than deal with openly.

You can find a more detailed summary at Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) but in a nutshell: if you gave me 10 minutes I could give you a list at least 20 people deep of racists/sexists in newsrooms that everyone knows are racist/sexist.

I'm not even talking about newsrooms I've worked in, though yes, they'd be on the list. From the whisper network I have a list of jobs I should not apply to, and people you do not want to work for. People who will openly block your career as a JOC.

Their bigotry/sexism is known. But to the people with hiring/decision making that person is their friend. Or too talented. So you have to navigate around them and if you can't, or don't want to spend your energy that way, you're weak.

And the reason I'm raising this is I want you to think long and hard when you read the coverage in the coming weeks. How quickly it elides past the racism. Political reporting is very white, and very male, and that is not an accident.

Also shoutout to @pervocracy for the concept of the missing stair and @ahumorlessfem for alerting me to my oversight