This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

If you take a close look at the photo that accompanies this column, you might notice something: I am a white male.

This is not an accomplishment I strived for. It just happened, as the numbers came up a certain way in a roll of the genetic dice.

Being a white male, the popular culture tells us, means that I must wield enormous influence in politics, the mass media and society as a whole — and, because of that influence, I'm responsible for all manner of evils in the world.

Somehow, I don't feel all-powerful or particularly evil. Maybe I'm not doing the white-male thing right. Based on what's happening these days, I thought of many ways I'm not behaving like a stereotypical white male:

• I have never railed against the existence of female characters in video games, or against critics who have pointed out the sexist and misogynist elements of some video games. I also have never made death threats via social media against female video-game designers or critics, nor have I ever covered up such behavior by arguing that I was just looking out for journalistic ethics in the video-game criticism community.

• I cheered when I heard about a new "Ghostbusters" movie starring four female comedians, because I think those four women — Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones — are really funny, and Paul Feig is a great director of female comic talent. Not once did I complain that the movie, which I haven't seen yet, was a travesty against the original film, or that my childhood was being destroyed.

• I have not watched any of the movies Adam Sandler has made for Netflix.

• I have never danced like a dork in a sports arena when the JumboTron camera turned my way.

• I have never opined that I would switch my vote from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump because I could see no difference between an anti-Wall Street socialist and a fulminating real-estate developer.

• In my college days, I never got drunk at a college party and thought, "Now would be a good time to try to force sex on an unconscious woman." I also never tried to blame such behavior on a campus culture toward alcohol and promiscuity (as the friends and family of the Stanford rapist Brock Turner did).

• I have never declared myself a victim of "reverse discrimination."

• I never proclaimed that Muhammad Ali (or, for that matter, any other successful person of color) "transcended race." Also, unlike some people on Twitter, I never referred to Ali as Cassius Clay, because he stopped using that name before I was born — and continuing to use it now denies Ali his identity.

• I've never referred to the president of the United States, Barack Obama, as "Barry." I've also never posted racist memes on my Facebook involving President Obama and then said I was just making a joke.

• I have never worried about which bathroom other people are using. Some of this is because I, like most men, was taught to spend as little time as possible in a public restroom — get in, do your business and get out — and to never, ever make eye contact.

• I never assume that two women walking together, on the street or in the "Finding Dory" trailer, are a lesbian couple. If they are, that's lovely and I'm happy for them — but, either way, it's really none of my business.

• I have never snorted cocaine off any part of a hooker's anatomy. (If you watch movies about uber-rich white guys, as I have, you see this happen a lot.)

• I have never used the phrase "politically correct" as an insult or pretended that not being politically correct was a brave form of truth-telling and not just a fancy way of defending my right to be an insensitive douchebag.

• I am not always oblivious about the concepts of white privilege and male privilege. Sometimes, but not always — which puts me ahead of a fair number of white males.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.