It's not demographics

Influencers are blaming a demographic for a crime in the news again. I’m in that demographic. Being told people like me are the cause of it isn’t right.

And it isn’t where the pattern is.

The pattern is the system

Demographics don’t run cover-ups. Institutions do. They handle it internally, quietly reassign the problem, and protect the reputation, and they keep doing it for years.

Larry Nassar abused athletes for decades, and he had help. Michigan State had complaints about him going back to the 1990s, cleared him in a 2014 Title IX investigation, and let him go back to seeing patients. The Department of Education later fined the university $4.5 million for failing to respond to reports and failing to protect students. When USA Gymnastics finally took allegations to the FBI in 2015, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the Indianapolis field office didn’t treat them seriously, broke its own policies, and later gave misleading answers about it. According to the court filings the report cites, about 70 more women and girls were abused in the months that followed.

At Baylor, a 2016 outside investigation found “institutional failures at every level” of the university’s response to sexual assaults by football players. Coaches met with women who reported, and didn’t report it. Staff ran their own internal inquiries that discredited the women. Administrators discouraged students from coming forward at all. The president and the head coach lost their jobs, after years of it.

Different institutions, the same moves. Sometimes the system just lets it happen. Sometimes it’s the reason it happens.

Every one of these had people who did it and a system that let them. Here’s a partial list. It can’t be complete, because the whole point of a cover-up is that you don’t hear about it.

• 1969, US Army: My Lai, a massacre of civilians, covered up for more than a year.
• 1989, US Navy: USS Iowa, the Navy blamed the explosion on a sailor who died in it, then had to back down.
• 1991, US Navy: Tailhook, the Navy’s own investigation of mass sexual assaults stalled until the Pentagon took it over.
• 1996, US Army: Aberdeen, drill sergeants abusing trainees.
• 2002, Catholic Church: Archdiocese of Boston, abusive priests moved from parish to parish.
• 2003, US Air Force: Air Force Academy, cadets who reported assaults were the ones disciplined.
• 2004, US Army: Pat Tillman, a friendly-fire death hidden from his family and the public.
• 2009, Ireland: the Ryan Report, decades of abuse in church-run, state-funded institutions.
• 2011, Penn State: Jerry Sandusky, top officials kept it quiet.
• 2012, Boy Scouts of America: the “perversion files”, decades of files on accused leaders, kept internal.
• 2012, BBC: Jimmy Savile, a star protected for decades, and an investigation shelved.
• 2014, General Motors: ignition switches, a deadly defect known for more than a decade before the recall.
• 2014, State of Michigan: Flint, residents’ complaints about their water dismissed.
• 2015, Volkswagen: Dieselgate, software built to cheat emissions tests.
• 2016, Fox News: Roger Ailes, harassment handled with settlements.
• 2016, Baylor University: football, reports buried by coaches and administrators.
• 2016, USA Gymnastics, Michigan State, the FBI: Larry Nassar, complaints ignored for two decades.
• 2017, The Weinstein Company: Harvey Weinstein, settlements and nondisclosure agreements.
• 2017, Australia: Royal Commission, churches, schools, sports clubs and state care, all failing the same way.
• 2018, Catholic Church: Pennsylvania grand jury, about 300 priests, more than 1,000 children, and senior officials who hid it.
• 2018, University of Southern California: George Tyndall, decades of complaints, then a quiet resignation with a payout.
• 2019, Ohio State University: Richard Strauss, staff knew as early as 1979.
• 2019, Boeing: 737 MAX, regulators misled about the system behind two crashes.
• 2019, Purdue Pharma: OxyContin, the risk of addiction played down.
• 2020, US Army: Fort Hood, an independent review found a command climate that tolerated harassment.
• 2021, University of Michigan: Robert Anderson, staff knew for decades.
• 2021, Chicago Blackhawks: Kyle Beach, team leadership heard about it in 2010 and did nothing.
• 2021, Facebook: the Facebook Files.
• 2022, US Soccer and the NWSL: NWSL, abuse across the league while the people in charge looked away.
• 2022, Southern Baptist Convention: Southern Baptists, leaders kept a private list of accused ministers.
• 2023, Columbia University: Robert Hadden, a doctor allowed back to see patients after he was arrested.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to, and will keep coming back to here: why do humans protect institutions more than each other?

Reputation is money

Protecting the brand and protecting the profits are the same thing. A church with no reputation gets no donations. A university with a scandal loses donors and recruits. A football program loses games and money. A sports federation loses sponsors. The cover-up isn’t about who the abuser was. It’s about what the truth would cost.

We protect Facebook too

Facebook is a company, it makes a lot of money, and it harms kids. Its own researchers told it so: a 2019 internal slide said “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” In public, its executives played the concerns down.

I’m not comparing what happened to those kids with what happened to the women in the stories above. I’m pointing at the same shape. You report the harm, and you get routed to the terms of service, the algorithm, and content moderation. The machine protects itself, and the people inside it keep their jobs.

Blame the people who did it, and the systems that let them

The person who committed the crime is responsible. So is the institution that looked away, covered it up, or made it possible. A demographic isn’t.

Blaming a demographic is bigotry, flat out. Don’t be a bigot. It’s also easy, and it lets the system off the hook.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

— Jesus, Mark 2:27

He broke the rules of the most powerful institution he knew to help the person in front of him. In his story about the beaten man on the road, the priest and the Levite walk past.

Break the rule. Ignore the algorithm. Help your neighbor.