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Notes -
This probably comes off as trying to paint a political gotcha, but really I just think that turning this frame around is kind of insightful, so hear me out…
Is Kamala choosing a midwestern white guy a form of DEI?
Let’s go through some scenarios.
If the ticket was two women it’d be seen as overly feminine, there’s no male voice. I do believe personally that this could be an issue and I suspect the political right would agree.
If it was two black people, white people wouldn’t feel represented.
Even choosing the gay white gay is sort of problematic and probably won’t happen even though he’s midwestern and an excellent speaker.
I’m a white guy who is critical of DEI and particularly its excesses, but having the shoe be on the other foot does give more of a felt sense of where this idea comes from originally.
For the average white guy, he wouldn’t feel represented if the president and vice president were both black. He’d probably suspect that deep down the needs of his community are not a priority.
If it was two women, he likely wouldn’t feel that his demographic is being represented well either. There needs to be a masculine voice in there.
Kamala Harris picking a white midwestern guy is essentially done so that the ticket has more diversity and inclusion. An all black ticket would be seen as problematic among white people. An all female ticket would be seen as problematic among men. A black woman and a gay guy probably doesn’t cut it to pander to the straight white male demographic in the way that it needs to so they feel comfortable to pull the lever.
We’re probably not that long away from the point where white men feel the need to make a case for inclusion so that decision making bodies have more diverse voices at the table to better represent the communities that might otherwise not be prioritized.
I saw someone making this sort of up their own ass and out the other side argument before. They expanded the context of DEI to the point where they claimed all vice presidential picks have been "DEI" picks. Because they are largely chosen on the basis of choosing someone based on identity to shore up the political coalition you are the head of.
I think that's bullshit, and that's not DEI. DEI is way, way dumber than that. DEI is the hammer that thinks every problem is a nail. In no world where George W Bush is choosing a "DEI" VP candidate to shore up his political coalition does he choose Dick Cheney. There were darker motives at play there.
DEI in practice is putting the cart before the horse. It's an almost religious belief that merit is a myth, and that you can assign job positions of the highest importance based on "equity" and the poor oppressed peoples denied the chance to prove themselves will rise to the occasion. It almost goes out of it's way to hire unqualified diverse candidates to make that point. Then it frequently obfuscates all markers of success or failure in the position. Frequently when the failure is so naked to see it cannot be obfuscated, it acts like success or failure was not the point, but only "equity".
So when people call Kamala Harris a DEI VP, it's because of that. Because Biden, bafflingly, didn't just pick a "black" woman. He picked the most unpopular, least qualified, dropped out first candidate from the roster. The fact that the always loser Stacy Abrams was also in the running is telling. As opposed to Tulsi, Yang, Buttigieg or any of the other people who hung in past Iowa that still count as "diverse" and might have actually brought some coalition building to the ticket.
Now if Kamala picks an absolute loser idiot white guy because she feels the need to placate white liberals, I could accept that being DEI. But it's looking like she's going to pick someone that actually brings something to the ticket, unlike she did in 2020. Most likely counting on Josh Shapiro to deliver PA's electoral votes.
FWIW I tend to agree with you in practice. DEI attached to an ideology that merit doesn’t matter or even in a more toxic form, that measures of merit are relics of white supremacy and patriarchy are pretty obviously ridiculous, and a road to ruin for any organization or institution that gets infected by this.
But I think you can also steelman the DEI ethos and get at some core realities underlying it.
Namely, there’s all sorts of implicit biases and lived experiences that might make it likely that for example, a black president/VP combo would prioritize issues that affect black communities and leave white guys feeling somewhat unrepresented, whether for legitimate reasons or even just illegitimate vibes based reasons.
This obviously is a framing that I set up to convey to white guys such as myself some of the gut level reactions that people who historically were never really represented in the way that us white guys have experienced as the norm.
Once you flip that, I think even conservatives would start to understand some typically progressive language, such as the importance of having diverse voices at the table, the dynamics of inclusion vs marginalization, equity for different groups when in comes to what decisions are made by the power structure, etc.
These terms have all become sort of strawmen and the well has become poisoned by all the crazy excesses that have gone on.
But at the core, IMO these are fundamental concepts of any race or cultural relations in a society and the typically dominant group would very quickly find themselves having to wrangle with similarly coded language if suddenly they were excluded.
So I could foresee a future in which conservative white guys see a need to argue for inclusion, I think it’s just a part of being in any multicultural society that representation at the seats at the table of power is going to be one of the primary sources of resentment.
And going all the way with this, it can even make sense why in some cases the inclusion of different groups at the table in some cases supercedes pure meritocracy in a democracy.
This is essentially why we aim to have representatives from all districts of a state. Say there’s a state with a blue tech hub but also an underdeveloped and neglected red district with some Appalachia or Deep South type issues regarding education, infrastructure, health, addiction, etc.
We should have some representatives from that community even if they aren’t at the top of the meritocracy.
That way they have a seat at the table and can at least provide a voice for that communities needs. Otherwise it’s just the tech hub guys and the backwoods are out of sight out of mind.
But there’s this delicate balancing act where meritocracy still has to form a fundamental pillar. Part of what I see the left wrangling with is trying to arrive at the synthesis of how to balance tribal desires for inclusion especially in a system where bias exists with meritocracy and the consequences of not giving it its due.
I think that flipping the frame to consider other examples helps think through the problem better. For example, how do we increase the representation of conservatives in academia? Should we? Is it pure meritocracy or are there a bunch of subtle factors and biases that led to the current state of affairs? Wading into the weeds of all this helps illuminate the culture war better IMO.
Flipping the frame does not work because the frame is held on by power.
You're not going to get academia to not be racist against whites because they don't hold these ideas for scientific reasons. You can't debate with power.
And attempting to dislodge power by remaining in its frame is a fool's errand.
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