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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts
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You could also argue that he was hired for representation. The goal is not to get as many black women into power as possible, but to keep the congress diverse. So ideally, there would be half men, half women, some significant fraction black, and so on.
She could have picked another woman as a VP, and it would not have been too bad. But from a diversity perspective, it is better to represent more parts of the population in these positions.
This. I don't understand why people think diversity is a bad thing. True democracy and progress comes when everyone is well represented and everyone's opinions are heard.
With that said we have a lot of institutional barriers that need to be utterly demolished before the people will actually be heard. We have a long way to go, and the first step is to participate in your local elections and vote for the people who actually listen.
I would love to see Gretchen Whitmer but reality says we are (hopefully) ready for a woman in charge, two is sadly pushing it. Maybe in 20-40 years, it will be something to see before I die. (I’m 50). But I’m estatic about Walz!!! He so… wholesome? “Perfect”? Perfect fit. So warm and compassionate. And the ticket has GenX! We are FINALLY represented! 💙
I'm not sure I'm hearing anyone saying diversity is a bad thing.
People used "diversity hire" as an attack on Harris, but no one is using it as an attack on Walz, even though everyone basically immediately knew that the VP pick was going to be an older white man if only to make the ticket less of a "leap".
That an all woman ticket, a ticket with two not-white people, or anything else not "default American politician" would face issue is kinda OPs point that we still have a long way to go to overcome those institutional barriers you mention.
Needing to consider diversity or representation when picking people is a sign that something has already gone wrong.
If the system were just and those barriers didn't exist, people wouldn't consider diversity, they'd just pick the best person and the diversity would just be there as consequence of demographics. (In a fair system, the top N% of the population will have a comparable demographic breakdown to the population at large).
It's a sign of a cultural hangup that we definitely consider diversity, and need to in order to have decent representation, when making these choices, and even more sad that it's only used as a cudgel against minorities , even when they were the first pick and others are being used to offset their "riskiness".
i haven't either, but the tone is weird, and it's making me a little iffy seeing people not go "look tim walz is a great pick, but this is definitely a shower thought to think about more completely" but instead its mostly just comments about how it's a little weird that kamala picked a white VP even though that makes perfect sense.
I understand why affirmative action is needed to somehow bring back some fairness and equality, but it is just sad that it is accepted as a permanent feature of a system that is systemically racist/mysoginist. It prevents tackling the root causes and investing in a free education system which is the only way to fix this on the long run. But anyway we have science fiction movies and series that do it right... I mean the fact that e.g. a ticket Harris/AOC is science fiction saddens me
It's not preventing solving the root cause. It's helping put people in power who can attempt to solve it by for example investing in free education. Unless you put enough such people through education into the halls of power, you can't hope that someone from the winner class of the system would do things to hurt their children from having such advantage to win. And then you have people who constantly and actively oppose any such actions. So things are improving but there still aren't enough people in the halls of power to do the work needed to root out these problems.
The thing is... you're not really represented because they look the same as you. Someone who could run as the Aryan candidate may represent the downtrodden PoC than someone who looks like them.
There's plenty of PoC who still represent the GoP, even if it's not the same as Democrats.
Values are about more than appearance, despite what many conservatives will tell you.