Flashback – (Mis)understanding Insurance

If they learn economics in journalism school, they must quickly forget everything upon graduation. Furthermore, when the facts don't make a compelling story, they resort to the usual tactic of trying to make stories fit their worldview or make things look scarier than they are. Here is a prime example I gave in December 2016.

[As I was reading the transcript of Scott Pelley’s "60 Minutes" interview with House Speaker Paul Ryan, I noticed that he seemed uninterested in hard news or in-depth information so much as he was interested in tripping up the Speaker, trying to put him in a position of disagreeing with his new boss, making one or the other of them look bad, or uncovering something potentially embarrassing.

He asked how often the two speak on the phone and who initiates the conversation. The answers were almost daily and both. No news there. How does he answer the phone? “He doesn’t say, ‘This is the president-elect?’” No. “Have you told him being president is not being CEO of the United States, that the Congress is going to have a say?” 

Instead of asking how the two got together after a contentious election, he asked, “Who apologized to whom?” It’s clear by now that Pelley has no liking or respect for Donald Trump, thinks he is a bully and a racist, and is searching for evidence to back up his views. Better yet, he would like to get Ryan to agree on any point that might make it seem he is of the same opinion.

The silliness and self-serving finally comes to a close, and Pelley asks a number of questions about policy issues. Soon he gets to the details about possible changes to Obamacare and the sniping continues. At one point Pelley says “And women will pay the same as men? That didn’t used to be the case.” This is a question designed to get an answer that will incite outrage. He is trying to get some admission of Republican bias against women, but showing in the process that he does not understand how insurance works and counting on the fact that many Americans don’t either.

Insurance usually works by assessing the risk and charging premiums accordingly. If you have homeowner’s insurance you expect a discount for having a working alarm system. Teen drivers are generally less safe than more experienced drivers, but boys have more accidents than girls. Auto insurance for a young man 16-25 is higher. There is no outrage there. It’s not unusual for companies to charge smokers more for their health insurance benefits. Owners of cars with higher repair costs pay higher premiums. Older cars are cheaper to insure due to the lower replacement cost. Those who don’t drive as many miles sometimes pay lower premiums. Costs of auto and homeowners insurance vary by what part of the country and by the size of the town or city you live in. And since women outlive men and take fewer chances, they pay less for life insurance. Older people pay more, as do those who participate in dangerous hobbies like skydiving or juggling chainsaws.

This all happens without a stir. Everyone seems to understand that certain classes of people are at a higher risk for either the frequency or the size of insurance claims. Hence they should pay more. The ones in the classes with higher premiums don’t like it, but they pay. So why would people be upset that some women, especially those of childbearing age, might have to pay more? That “used to be the case” and it didn’t have anything to do with prejudice or victimization.

Apparently the government and some group of citizens have now decided that charging women more for health insurance can be explained only by prejudice. Everyone must purchase the same insurance for the same cost or there will be an uproar. And Scott Pelley and others in his profession are more than happy to incite and later fan the flames of that uproar, because it makes their job of reporting the news so much easier. Their job is not to inform or to educate; their job is to attract views and clicks. Nothing does that better than a good demonstration or protest, even those grounded in fundamental misunderstanding.]

P.S. I have often said that problems with healthcare costs must be solved on the basis of costs, not by tinkering with health insurance, but that’s for another discussion.

National Debt – What, Me Worry?

If you care about the country going bankrupt, it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Both parties seem to be indifferent to it. There's only a small difference in the size of their trillion-dollar spending bills.

 

Below are two graphs. The first shows, from the best source I could find, the spending and revenue of the United States over the last 30 years. We actually had a small surplus in the last two years of the Clinton Administration. Then things went south. Bush started a couple of unnecessary wars and added Medicare Part D. Obama continued those wars, failed to take ISIS seriously and threw in some stimulus. Trump wanted to build up the military, already the largest in the world, but the democrats would only agree if they got a proportional boost to their favorite domestic programs. The lines clearly show what happened. 

 

 

Just as a thought experiment, suppose the rate of increase of federal government spending had remained the same as it was from 1990 to 2000 under Bush (R) and Clinton (D) – not the same level of spending, but the same rate of increase. Here is what that would have looked like. 

 

Even with the two tax cuts that politicians told us would cause huge problems; many of those years would have run a surplus fed by growth in the economy over the past 8 years or so. 

 

Now this exact scenario would likely not have been possible due to the increased Social Security outlays as the Baby Boomers hit retirement age. But still, if you ask people over the age of 45 how life was during the 1990s, how well needs were being met; the majority would say that things were fine. 

 

The question is: how much of that extra spending went to real improvement, how much was pure waste, and how much went to buying your vote (using your own money to do it)?

 

We hope for responsible leaders; but when it comes to spending, politicians take the attitude of Alfred E. Newman, the fictitious mascot of Mad Magazine.

Flashback – Coke and Pepsi Warnings

Much as the news media tries to upset us at every turn and on every subject, we don’t have time or the energy to be afraid of everything. That’s where perspective and critical thinking come in.

 

The following entry from 2012 gives a couple of examples of how the news media plays to our emotions, not only to enhance their profits, but often hoping we will take the bait and panic. It’s a power play, pure and simple, to push the public in a desired direction. If enough people back a belief, whether it's true or false, the government steps in with more regulations.

[One day I overheard discussion of a news item about using radiation to kill bacteria on vegetables. A colleague asked the rhetorical question, “Who would buy that?” I told her that I had done some reading on the subject recently and the irradiated vegetables were perfectly safe to eat. In fact, those vegetables had been exposed to radiation for at least half of the time they were growing and couldn’t have grown without it. It’s called sunlight. But people don’t think of sunlight as radiation. They don’t consider cellphone signals as radiation (except when falsely warned about cancer dangers). Radiation is thought to be always bad and dangerous – no distinction is made between harmless and dangerous. That would take some critical thinking.

People also fear carcinogens. If it might cause cancer, regardless of the conditions or dosage level, it’s bad. But so many things have been shown to cause cancer (including good-old sunlight, by the way) that comedians joke about it. There are even substances that were once considered dangerous but have earned a reprieve. It seems you can hardly move without bumping into something that at one time or another wasn’t considered deadly.

Now we get a recent news article about a substance in Coke and Pepsi coloring being banned in California because it caused cancer in lab animals. Later in the article it states that humans would have to drink over one thousand cans per day to reach the dosage level given to the rodents. Of course, if you tried to drink that much in a day the amount of water would kill you long before you reached the danger point for developing cancer. (Yes, you can overdose on water!) 

Perspective is about moderation, understanding that you can keep trying to make your food, your beverages and your environment purer but you reach a point where an extra dollar of effort yields pennies in benefit, and finally a point where an extra dollar of effort yields no benefit at all. Yet there are still those with so little perspective and no understanding of science who insist that the water and the air are never clean enough (and the soda never pure enough). Then it’s left to politicians and judges, not scientists, to sort it out.  And who pays any additional costs? – you guessed it!]

MSG and Elections

Throughout the years under a number of different topics, I have made the point that people tend to strongly hold onto ideas, whether they are true or false. They may have heard them repeatedly, heard them from an authoritative source or just liked the idea because it reinforced their favorite biases. In any case, ideas tend to stick.

 

Just a few weeks ago I reran a flashback about the misconception that electric power lines are health hazards. This idea was passed around by the news media back in the 1980s based on flimsy evidence. The idea stuck despite it being firmly disproved within ten years. People still believe it today.

 

In "More Secrets to a Longer Life" on September 28, I discussed the myth that vitamin C reduces the duration and intensity of a head cold. Companies take advantage of this decades-long misconception, making money by offering vitamin C in several forms. I also made reference to other persistent misconceptions: the power of cranberry juice to treat urinary problems; that cutting back on fat is the key to a healthier lifestyle; and the exaggerated benefits of antioxidants.

In light of that, I read some interesting information about monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Bill Bryson’s book, The Body. Here is part of the first paragraph on page 106:

MSG has had a hard time of it in the West since1968 when The New England Journal of Medicine published a letter – not an article or a study, but simply a letter – from a doctor noting that he sometimes felt vaguely unwell after eating in Chinese restaurants and wondered if it was the MSG added to the food that was responsible. The headline on the letter was “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” and from this small beginning it became fixed in people’s minds that MSG was a kind of toxin. In fact, it isn’t.

Further investigation bears this out. From the MSG Fact Sheet: “The scientific research supporting the safety and benefits of monosodium glutamate (MSG) is extensive.”

Another source, the Healthline website states, “While some people assert that the glutamate from MSG can act as an excitotoxin, leading to the destruction of nerve cells, no human studies support this.”

After discussing common complaints, the Mayo Clinic summarizes, “However, researchers have found no definitive evidence of a link between MSG and these [reported] symptoms.”

 

There is no scientific or medical evidence, yet people still report symptoms because they heard it and believe it.

 

What does this have to do with elections? 

 

If you can expose voters to enough misrepresentations, quotations taken out of context, made up stories and unfounded accusations against an opponent and get them to buy it, why not say them over and over and arrange for others to repeat them? Most people don’t do the research/critical thinking; they hear it and it sticks, especially if their mind is already made up. (Right now people on each side are thinking I am talking only about lies spread by the other side!)

 

Politicians and biased news organizations (aren't they all?) do it because it works. And the tactic continues to get more intense. The underlying cause is that voters let them get away with it. They get so stirred up by the "news" that doing cool, critical thinking becomes more difficult than usual, and every new lie stirs them up more. 

 

It reminds me of a casual definition to explain differences in drama: comedy is when the protagonists get what they want; tragedy is when they get what they deserve. By passively following along, buying all of the drama served up by politicians, the media and partisans on social media instead of critically challenging the talking points; Americans will continue to get the leaders and the government they deserve. And it will be a tragedy.

Flashback – Consumer Protection Gone Crazy

Back in 2011 I explained how new legislation regarding credit cards led to the companies increasing fees and interest rates. More recently, about a year ago, I once again emphasized how well intentioned consumer protection laws often have unintended consequences. Here is that entry from August 23 of last year.

[Last time I wrote about a lawmaker introducing a bill to protect Americans from Internet addiction, a condition that has no formal definition or diagnosis. Whenever a problem or “epidemic” arises, someone in power decides that there is a government solution to change the conditions or behavior. (Even when the government was the source of the problem.)

People are not trusted to solve their own problems, often because they don't. In the end everyone loses some freedom because of the bad decisions of a few. It takes critical thinking to identify the root of the problem and personal responsibility to own the solution instead of passing it off to a higher power.

This dynamic was reinforced a few days ago when a package arrived from one of those catalogs that frequently appear in the mailbox. In the package was a gift pen, similar to those used by various companies as promotional items. It was an ordinary retractable ballpoint similar to those from a dentist’s office or a job fair but with one difference. It came in a plastic sleeve with the words, “WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm” followed by a web address.

The address led to the California Proposition 65 page. “The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is establishing this website to provide the public with information on chemicals, products and locations often associated with Proposition 65 warnings.  These warnings inform Californians about their exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” 

Notice that the above statement reads, “cause cancer” not “may cause cancer,” implying that they have studies to definitively prove a direct causal link. Since the list includes over 900 chemicals, that is a doubtful assertion. Looking at one random example: “The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) lists coconut oil diethanolamine condensate (cocamide DEA) as an IARC Group 2B carcinogen, which identifies this chemical as possibly carcinogenic to humans."[Emphasis added] Apparently it only takes possibly to make the list. 

The full list includes a large number of arcane-sounding chemicals, e.g., Amikacin Sulfate and Zalcitabine, but it also includes alcoholic beverages, aspirin, tobacco smoke, nicotine and oral contraceptives.  

How helpful is this? Is tobacco smoke or nicotine a surprise? Why do Californians need the information and not everyone else? Coffee contains acrylamide, which is on the list, so last year a judge decided, "coffee sellers in the state should have to post cancer warnings.” But in “2016, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization moved coffee off its ‘possible carcinogen’ list.”

This isn’t science; it’s judges and lawmakers deciding what should or should not be on a list. It’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” gone crazy. People don’t have time to be careful about 900 chemicals and all the products they go into. I have no idea which part of the promotional pen I should worry about or how it might hurt me. Tanning beds and sunlight are not on the list only because they are not chemicals. The situation is so bad that my seven-year-old granddaughter upon returning from a vacation in San Diego commented about how silly it was seeing all the warning signs everywhere coffee was sold.

Not only is this not helpful, it adds cost. The extra warning labels and signs cost money. It is costly to reformulate products to avoid having to post warnings, or worse, to avoid the threat from lawyers, “some of whose businesses are built entirely on filing Proposition 65 lawsuits” on behalf of “straw man plaintiffs." The cost of these nuisance consequences comes back on all of us. (Economic understanding reminds us there is no magic money tree to make up the difference. It all gets passed along to the end consumer.)

Does the list ever shrink or become reasonable, or do we get to the point where everything needs a progressively more meaningless label? I’m sure many people thought this was a great idea back in 1986 not realizing that they may be creating a monster.]

Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples' Day

It is easy to see why Columbus is considered a fool and a scoundrel. He miscalculated the distance from Europe to Asia. He brought new diseases to the Americas, or at least led the way so others could spread those diseases. After he arrived, he murdered and plundered, or at least led the way so others could do the murdering and plundering.

 

If he had not discovered America someone else would have done so later, likely with the same results. The only difference would be in the names of some streets and cities. It has become very popular to criticize figures from the past by applying today’s knowledge, values and standards of behavior, but apparently that’s where we are. 

 

However, if we are going to hold Columbus accountable, it’s only fair to take a closer look at the suggested alternative holiday name and hold those people to similar standards.

 

Some facts come from this publication from the University of Arizona. “Indigenous populations engaged in warfare and ritual violence long before European contact.” They were not the innocent, peace-loving people of recent depictions.

Another source continues, “Contemporary accounts from both European and Indigenous sources reveal that the pre-Columbian world was a place where slavery, trafficking, sexual exploitation, oppression, and even genocide was commonplace prior to any European contact.”

A Harvard University site includes a history of slavery by indigenous people. “Slavery existed in North America long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. For centuries, from the pre-Columbian era through the 1840s, Native Americans took prisoners of war and killed, adopted, or enslaved them.

 

After the arrival of European settlers, such behavior continued. “Comanche were specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they became known as ‘Lords of the Plains’.” They are described as “imperialist and genocidal” relative to both neighboring tribes and white settlers. “When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apaches.”

 

The Smithsonian Magazine tells of the practice of black slavery by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes. “The Five Civilized Tribes were deeply committed to slavery, established their own racialized black codes, immediately reestablished slavery when they arrived in Indian territory [after forced resettlement], rebuilt their nations with slave labor, crushed slave rebellions, and enthusiastically sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War.” One native chief in Mississippi owned a plantation of “15,000 acres” and had “400 enslaved Africans under his dominion.”

 

Can we hold all Native Americans responsible for the brutality and mistakes of a very few and cancel their holiday, when most of them were just trying to live their lives as best as they could? That doesn’t seem fair, but it’s exactly the same treatment the police have been getting lately. Not to do so smacks of selective outrage.

 

As a solution we might take page from the British calendar and change the name to October Bank Holiday – except don’t get me started on those evil bankers!

Flashback – Plastic Straws

I originally called this one "How Much We Take On Faith." At the time it was clear that many information sources are not reliable, a notion reconfirmed by many experiences since then. Politicians, advocates and pundits confidently make assertions to support their agendas. We can never tell what is true, what is pure fantasy, or how much is just so much hot air. 

 

Plastic straw mandates are examples of many symbolic acts. Using bad data or no data, authorities try to fool us, and probably themselves, into believing that they are really making a difference. They want to appear caring about all the right things, then garner enough support to pass laws and regulations forcing everyone to comply.

 

Here is the piece from 2018.

[The other day I got into a discussion with a colleague about plastic, which led to a comment about the amount of plastic in the ocean and what a problem it is. My response that only about 1% of the ocean plastic comes from the United States was met with stares of disbelief. Instead of arguing the point with someone who firmly believed the opposite, I offered to send references. The next day I emailed an explanation of the situation from a number of reputable sources.

From National Geographic in a story about the large accumulation of waste in the Pacific: "Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today."

My next stop was a Bloomberg article with a sub headline of: “Skipping straws may be hip. But there are much better ways to fight pollution.” They first point out that the original estimate, the one activists and news media cite with confidence, that Americans use 500 million straws per day is based on highly dubious data that came from a small survey by a nine-year-old for a grade school science project. Then it was spread without any attempt to verify it by those who wanted to emphasize the problem. "Similarly, two Australian scientists estimate that there are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines. Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year.” So what we have been told about straws being the problem is a gross exaggeration.

A Science report on marine pollution verifies exactly what I was saying with a table on their site,  Table 1 titled: “Waste estimates for 2010 for the top 20 countries ranked by mass of mismanaged plastic waste (in units of millions of metric tons per year).” The US is listed at the bottom of the table with a contribution of .09% – less than one percent. That same information is repeated in pie charts on other sites.

So all this fuss about banning straws is bogus. It is a feel-good exercise that grows because so few people take the time to do the research. Ocean pollution is a problem, but the advocates and politicians are misinformed and are passing along that poor information to the rest of us – and we are buying it.

This and many other trends and movements have become their own religions. They depend on blind faith. The preachers stand up and confidently make ignorant and absurd allegations about chemicals, food safety, pollution, economics and a host of other subjects. The general population takes it on faith, chanting “amen” in all the right places. This leads to poor policies and results in those responsible for poor policies being reelected on the basis of making their followers feel good about themselves, about how pure they are, about how caring they are. It’s much more about ego and self esteem than science or actually saving the planet.

In reality these policies deliver little or no benefit and may have unknown side effects or unforeseen consequences. They are at best a waste of time. Critical thinking is the answer, but no one wants to deal with facts or reality.] Feeling good is more important.

Energy Stupidity

Perhaps stupidity is too strong a word. Perhaps it’s a combination of ignorance, impatience, an inability to foresee all consequences and a tendency to let emotions override critical thinking. This is not an example from America, but a powerful lesson.

 

US News reports, last weekend in Luetzerath, Germany "hundreds of anti-coal activists staged protests in and around a mine in western Germany.” This is part of an ongoing series of demonstrations against coal mining and the use of coal power plants. “Environmental groups oppose the German government's decision to allow the mining and burning of coal in the country until 2038.” They believe that would be too late to meaningfully affect climate change.

 

This activity is just the latest of many protests against both mines and power facilities. Here is a headline that one outlet labeled the top environmental story of 2017: “Thousands protest German coal use.” I also found news items about similar demonstrations from June and December 2019 and earlier this year. There is no doubt that this recent protest will not be the last.

 

So far it seems reasonable. Coal burning pollutes the air. Phasing it out will clean the air and remove greenhouse gases. Maybe they have a point, except…

 

In 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima accident and with 70 percent of the population opposed to nuclear power, Angela Merkel announced that Germany would close all 17 of its nuclear reactors by 2022. At the time a science reporter for Time wondered how Germany would meet “increasing energy demands while also tackling climate change” as they “shun any low-carbon energy sources, no matter how troubling.” (Nuclear energy is not low-carbon; it’s zero-carbon.)

With the plan in place “to curb greenhouse gas emissions but at the same time...shut down all of its nuclear power stations, which in the year 2000 had a 29.5 per cent share of the power generation mix,” Although Germany has been moving heavily toward renewables, where does the power to fill the need between now and 2038 come from?

The Asia Times earlier this year noted, “Germany now generates over 35% of its yearly electricity consumption from wind and solar sources” with thousands of wind turbines and over a million photovoltaic installations. “Unfortunately, most of the time the actual amount of electricity produced is only a fraction of the installed capacity. Worse, on ‘bad days’ it can fall to nearly zero.” That leaves 65% or more unaccounted for.

Forbes lists a few problems with this rapid transition. It imposes increased direct and indirect costs on German businesses and consumers, who already pay “among the highest electricity costs in the world.” The “landscape is being ruined by unsightly wind turbines” virtually everywhere, and the supply from these sources “varies dramatically in the course of a day or week.”

 

Finally, a McKinsey report from last year, that one German newspaper described as “disastrous,” stated that the current “transition to renewables, poses a significant threat to the nation's economy and energy supply.” At times the country’s grid was close to a total blackout and had to be stabilized by short-term imports. The implementation lags its completion goal by eight or more years.

 

Germany has major problems with all aspects of their renewable energy transition, made worse by the added gap from closing their nuclear plants, plus protests against a coal power industry needed to take up the slack. What else are they supposed to do in the interim, attach generators to exercise bikes and ask citizens to generate their own electricity?

 

Unfortunately, instead of learning from the German experience, other European countries, including France, with 58 nuclear power reactors producing nearly 72% of their electricity, plan to follow their lead. 

 

Critical thinking has taken a backseat to emotional reactions. Nuclear power has always been a safe and pollution free energy source. “The risk of accidents in nuclear power plants is low and declining.” Modern technology is superior to the plants built years ago. And engineers in France are recycling spent fuel to avoid the need for massive radioactive waste sites. If fluke accidents drove decision making in other arenas we would be riding horses and be forbidden to have a swimming pool or a bucket of water in the backyard (among many other things).

 

In short, the German people have turned their back on a viable pollution-free alternative and then launched protests against the only industry able to take up the slack during the transition – maybe not stupid, but certainly not smart.

Flashback – Leading the Admirable Life

I have written about role models a couple of times. In this entry I pointed out in a lighthearted way the nonsense promoted by the media and others of needing a role model that “looks like me.” Not only is this unnecessarily limiting, it’s a bunch of foolishness driven by identity issues that do nothing to unify the country.  Here is the post from July 2019.

[How do you lead a good and admirable life, even if you are never going to be famous? Perhaps a good idea would be to search for and identify people who are widely admired and to try to follow their example.

With this in mind I went to the Wikipedia list of the 18 most widely admired people of the 20^th Century. The full list includes: Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Billy Graham, Pope John Paul II, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Ronald Reagan, Henry Ford, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher.

Indeed these are all admirable people, but immediately I run into a problem. Most of these people don’t look like me. Five are women, and three definitely have darker skin. Three have far more hair, Eisenhower has less, and Einstein’s hair – well. That certainly narrows down my options.

Maybe instead of being admired it would be better to be significant. Again there’s a list for that, this time from the Smithsonian. They have several different categories. As a Rebel or Resistor I have slim chances when I see names like Martin Luther King Jr., Robert E. Lee, Thomas Paine, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, W.E.B. Du Bois, Tecumseh, Sitting Bull, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Malcolm X. How many of these people look like me?

The rest of the categories were equally discouraging, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln (?) and especially where, listed under the athletes category, I found Secretariat!

Not to be deterred, I look for a role model under “25 Most Influential People In History By Attribute.” Bruce Lee, I don’t think so. Washington (again) was followed by Walt Disney, Louis Pasteur and Marilyn Monroe. I stopped reading. I can see this will be another dead end. Few if any of them look like me!

Yes, this essay has gotten a little silly, but it’s only to point out how silly people are to handicap themselves by believing their role models must be someone who “looks like me” to be valid. None of the originals had any role models at all. They just had to behave their way to success. We could learn a lot from them just by looking at their words and actions, yet we hear the looks-like-me mantra all the time on the news. The absence of a role model who looked like me is a favorite complaint. It seems like another excuse to portray oneself as victim, often by people who have been successful enough to be given a platform in the first place. That a role model must look like me is a limiting, negative and discouraging message to give to any child. It’s a shame that it has become such a common theme.]