I am a white male. I can find representations of myself on every channel, in the majority of books, comics and you-name-it. No other group on Earth is as well represented as I am in the media.

Now. Why isn’t that widely accepted and known and understood as a problem? By, you know, other white dudes. Everyone else gets it. It’s hard not to get it when you can’t find yourself in pop culture as anything but a painful stereotype, token addition or slow underhand toss.

You can not deny the sun when you have no shade.

But when you have enough shade you can make every excuse in the world, can’t you? Because the sun isn’t cooking you alive just then, so you have time. It’s easier.

Still, add a black character to a TV show. White dudes start bitching. Since “those folk” already have other black characters why do they need this one, too? “We allowed them to have the Cosby’s and the Fucking Fresh Prince, what more do they want?” Oh, but it isn’t racist. Don’t be silly. It’s just a question of fairness, you silly white folk somehow decide.

Because when you have one million jelly beans and someone brings a bag with one hundred jelly beans and gives eighty to you, and then hands twenty to someone else, you can’t grasp how that is fair at all. You got them all last time, didn’t you? You were not consulted about this change and would like those twenty jelly beans, please! Precedent has been set, and that sort of thing isn’t supposed to be subject to change all willy-nilly just because other people might like jelly beans of their own. Let them create their own jelly beans, even though you pretty much own the factories that they’re made at and won’t give fair business to anyone else. That’s just the way it is, you insist. It isn’t unfair. It’s just happenstance.

What, there’s a woman who wants a character to be a hero, just like the males get? Also a trans person? Other races, other genders and sexes and… “What next, everyone will want equal say and fair representation in stories and to see themselves reflected back at them in media?”

Well. Yes.

And they’ll get it. Oh, you might not want that to happen in a million years, but here’s a little secret: I’m a white mostly cisgender male. And I write more leads who are not white or male (in whatever combination of that works at the time) in my stories than I do white males. I’m not alone. This isn’t just “those outsiders” trying to steal your precious stranglehold on the universe. Oh no.

The equality is coming from inside the house.

Oh, it’ll take a while. And those of us who are white males will never be leading this charge. That’s not our role here. But we’ll be here. Supporting it. Trying to help.

And laughing at you all really hard as you drown.

Because here’s the other secret: I want to thank you! I do. I want to thank each of you who posts on twitter, or spews your hate in public. You are making a list of yourselves for the rest of us. You’re making it easier, not harder, in the long run. You’re coming out and declaring yourselves enemies of the future, and enemies of basic human respect and rights and dignity. How has that ever worked, in history, for any group in the long run? Seriously. Check it.

Then realize we are welcoming you to the start of the long run.