I was sitting on the couch clearing out emails one night not too long ago with the news playing in the background when my ears perked up to a headline about Facebook. The headline was something to the effect of the Facebook board to decide on Donald Trump ban.

We all know how that turned out. But I remember becoming incredulous over this whole storyline as the days passed. In what world, I thought, could someone pull the kind of shit Donald Trump pulled and not be immediately banned from a platform?

I mean if this was Donnie Trump Jr., a factory worker out of Dublin, Ohio posting this type of content, I don’t think he’d get the same deferential treatment. Donnie Jr. from Dublin would be booted faster than you can click the like button. He likely would not have his online conduct reviewed by a board over a 9-month period of time.

But the former president has not been officially booted yet. His ban has merely been extended. Trump will continue to receive special consideration in the coming months as Facebook digests the board’s feedback.

In what world, I thought. In what world?

It wasn’t long before that question became all-too-evident to me. It’s in this world. It’s in our world that a rich, white millionaire can assume the highest office in the nation (and arguably the world) and post content unbecoming of the highest office in the nation while a bunch of techies sit around scratching their heads wondering what they should do.

I was actually surprised that I was surprised by all of this. I was schooled early in life on the haves and have nots. Some people just have more, I learned. And some people live different lives by different sets of rules as a result.

It would have been nice to have just smiled at the news story and quietly whispered touche to The Donald. You have to admit, the guy is good in a slippery sort of way. And perhaps I could have smiled were it not for adjacent current events.

The tragedies played out in the media have simply become overbearing. There are stories of police brutality, violence against minorities, misogynistic crimes and the list goes on. It’s really not news. It’s been happening for more than 2 centuries in America. But the past four years have been unbearable.

The call we keep repeating is for equality — to not feel as though we are less because of some arbitrary trait assigned at birth. I can’t imagine any member of a society who wouldn’t support this (though I realize there are those who do not). It’s a worthy call. It’s a worthy goal.

But it often seems difficult for us to walk our talk. At the micro-level (professional, personal and local level), we do a great job of espousing equality. But we often fall short in our actions. In our professional design circles, for example, we still live in a world full of products that fail to account for basic deficiencies in eyesight, manual dexterity and other physical limitations.

These products are everywhere you look. I have yet to work on an interface or a product that is truly accessible. And I should note, I work in healthcare design. I can’t think of an industry that should care more about accessibility and ensuring their products are accessible.

We have in the past decade, seen more diversity in UX as a profession. In recent years, I have encountered more and more female designers. But I suspect they are still a minority. I have only worked with one black designer in the past 15 years. One. Most of that 15 years was me living and working in Chicago. It’s an understatement, but we have room to grow.

At the macro-level (the national level), we talk a pretty good game about equality. But we often fail to carry out any actions as a result of all that talk. We still have different sets of standards for different classes and castes. It’s not hard to find a headline today where some financial or social inequality is the primary topic.

The macro-level and micro-level of this problem are interdependent. They infect one another with both the good qualities and bad qualities spreading like viruses. It’s not a coincidence that our national headlines mirror local government, entire professions and industries.

It’s in this sort of world we find a company like Facebook that gives such special attention to a single user. Of course, I recognize this is the former president of the United States and as such, this decision will become a high-profile media event. It also stands to set a precedent should other tech companies follow suit in their decisions to ban or not ban Trump. It is for these very reasons that this issue is of the utmost importance.

I almost want to empathize with Facebook, with the whole situation really. I want to write that the president of the United States should receive special consideration — that the decision should be made carefully and time should be taken to ensure all of the details are thought through. This is an important office and an important position, after all.

But I can’t empathize. As a white, American male, I can no longer rationalize this behavior. As a white, American male, I have an obligation, a duty, to speak out.

The true issue here is whether the president of the United States should be held to the same standards as any other citizen in good standing. In a system of true equality, the answer to that cannot be anything other than “yes.” So, the argument follows that a citizen in good standing would have long since found themselves banned from Facebook for life should they have committed similar offenses to those of Donald Trump.

The problem for Facebook becomes an exercise in resisting the “Celebrity Halo” while also managing the media circus around this decision. I’m wondering how many Facebook executives involved are currently wishing they had simply pushed the abort button the same way Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey did when he banned Trump. But Facebook seems to have a case of conflicting values.

In mid-February, The Washington Post provided some insight into Facebook’s courtships with celebrities.

“Facebook has long given wide latitude to public figures, and has enshrined in its policies a “newsworthiness” exception that allows some problematic speech that would otherwise break its rules to stay up because it is in the public interest. The company says it invokes the exception when the public interest in seeing the content outweighs the risk of harm. The policy was developed during the 2016 election in response to hateful posts by Trump, The Washington Post reported last year.”

I am sure the public interest aspect of content is something Facebook truly considers. But I’d be naive at this point not to suggest that numbers or metrics play a large role in these types of policies. “Problematic speech” (or content) from celebrities often makes the 6 o’clock news. It also tends to generate a lot of traffic. Traffic is good for Facebook. You see where I am going with this.

I would wager the value of “problematic speech” that may be in the ”public interest” is a far lesser value than the pursuit of equality. I think pursuing a policy that treats conduct violations equally across all users appeals to a higher value. A user with 1 million followers should be treated in the same manner as a user with 10 followers. Isn’t that the equality we so readily espouse on our public platforms?

Facebook is no exception and they know it. Early last week, Alex Kantrowitz wrote an excellent article and quoted Julie Owono, a Facebook Oversight Board member. She essentially makes the same argument.

“Regular users should expect transparency, they should expect clarity in the rules, they should expect that the rules are applied the same way to everyone and not in an arbitrary way.”

We can assume if an oversight board member stated this, that message has reached the executives. These arguments are not complex at all. The executives quite likely came to the same conclusions on their own.

Facebook’s career page has a number of sections where they provide some insight into the culture of their company and their values. They value diversity and inclusiveness. They even make a point of how they empower employees of all colors and sexual orientation.

This isn’t necessarily unique. Most American companies or businesses have similar policies around race, inclusion, sexual orientation, discrimination, etc. These policies are all about equality.

So, to size it all up, we have a bunch of businesses and organizations in America who claim to foster environments of inclusion with zero-tolerance policies around discrimination and harassment. One of these companies is a high-profile tech giant — Facebook. And despite this company’s publicly proclaimed values of inclusivity and diversity, they are essentially giving themselves 9 months to deliberate over the case of a millionaire businessman turned president who violates many of the principles Facebook claims to value.

Facebook has really put itself in an awkward position. The longer it drags this out, the greater the drama. The eyes of the nation and perhaps the world are and will be upon them. And the importance of this decision cannot be understated.

Facebook is big tech. Thus the decision has implications for many of my colleagues in UX. We are (often by association only) a profession that generally operates in the big tech space. It is part of who we are and these companies often shape the direction our profession takes. And, a decision like this reflects on all of us.

Look, the tech industry has traditionally been a boy’s club. It’s a sausage party. Hell, between Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (often referred to as FAANG) there is only one non-white CEO. They are all men.

This “boy’s club” aspect of the tech industry may be slowly changing. But perceptions and reputations will take far longer to change.

A decision to reinstate Trump’s account will only work to further entrench the boy’s club reputation in big tech. The headlines will, of course, be huge. Trump's Facebook Account Reinstated, it might read. But the subtitle reads, Privileged Millionaire White Man’s Facebook Account Reinstated by Millionaire White Techies.

That may be harsh. But it is what people will think. It is the signal our profession and industry will send.

I find it sad that we can’t turn back the pages of time. There was a time when we would have asked in what world could a president like Trump exist and our answer would have been not in this world. But we cannot say that any longer. Something innocent has been lost — something we can’t get back. That thought touches something deep in my heart and brings with it a thread of melancholy.

I have no power over the decision Facebook makes. But I feel at this point in my life and in our history as a country, the price to remain silent has become too high. The price of being a white male who works in the tech space is writing this article. But it is also speaking out in our industry when we see inequality and then taking action when we can.

More than anything, we can become vigilant in maintaining our awareness — awareness of injustices, our own biases and of the irony of news stories where white, millionaire businessmen are coddled by Big White Tech.