Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot announced that she was taking a brief break from running the city into ground to limit interviews to “black and brown reporters”.

The media has rightfully condemned the move, but I have to ask, “Why?”

Lightfoot’s move is a cynical culture war distraction. Obviously. But she’s doing something racist that has become routine in American life.

1. College admissions, employment, and government contracts have long been conditioned on race and skin color.

2. There’s been a growing push to oust white authors in literature in favor of minority authors. That includes boycott events urging people not to read white authors for a month or a year.

3. Vaccine distribution specifically prioritized particular groups for racial reasons in a case of apartheid medicine.

What Mayor Lightfoot is doing is really no different.

Indeed, reporters are not really arguing against limiting the interviews to reporters of a particular race, but the power shift that allows politicians to dictate who will cover them. Yet, Lightfoot isn’t saying that she’ll only accept interviews from particular media outlets. What she’s saying is that she’ll only talk to black reporters.

That’s racist, but so is Biden announcing that he’s going to limit his Veep picks to black women. 

If you’re going to have government officials announcing that they’re going to hand out jobs and contracts to particular races, why not interviews?

Why is the media special?

If the entire country has to live under an apartheid system of systemic racism that discriminates against some people on behalf of others, why shouldn’t the media have to live under the same racist system it advocates for?