The Exclusive Few: Antiracist Elected Officials are also Racist Employers

written by Audra Grassia, edited by Loryn Wilson Carter

This is the second in a 12-part series about racism in the progressive political ecosystem. You can read my first post, which includes definitions and the reasons I am writing this series, here.

My focus is how we — in the progressive and Democratic political ecosystem — reinforce racism by virtue of how we recruit people; how we promote (or fail to promote) people; and how we retain (or fail to retain) people.

In each part of this series, I’ll be diving deep into a particular issue that generally follows a campaign career life cycle. I’ll endeavor to offer ideas and solutions on how we can start to address and work towards creating more antiracist policies.

Some Additional Notes on Terminology

While the focus of my series is racism, broadly speaking, I want to acknowledge that anti-Black racism is particularly prevalent in the progressive political ecosystem. I do not address anti-Black racism specifically, as distinct from the broader racism I’m discussing — but we do need to talk about it.

For those who want to talk about anti-Black racism in our space, I am committed to doing whatever I can to lift up your voices and stories or to give voice to those who don’t want to be out front. To the extent that my writing builds an audience, I will commit to sharing your stories with this audience.

My goal in this initial series, however, is to do a deep dive into the structures and systems that create racism, more broadly and then I would love to dig deeper into how that specifically manifests itself into anti-Black racism, as a distinct problem.

Finally, moving forward, I will use the term Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) when talking about all people of color, because I agree that it’s important to recognize Black and Indigenous people for their unique experiences in our Country.

I will continue to say “Black” and “Latinx” when it’s relevant and appropriate (usually when speaking in terms of communities). And I will continue to say “Black” and “Brown” when and where it’s appropriate (usually when speaking in terms of individuals who do not benefit from White privilege, because of the literal color of their skin).

I capitalize any word that refers to a racial group of people, because I think it’s the respectful thing to do.

The Exclusive Few

From Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist:

“ ‘Racist policy’ also cuts to the core of racism better than ‘racial discrimination,’ another common phrase...When someone discriminates against a person in a racial group, they are carrying out a policy or taking advantage of the lack of a protective policy. We all have the power to discriminate. Only an exclusive few have the power to make policy. Focusing on “racial discrimination” takes our eyes off the central agents of racism: racist policy and racist policymakers, or what I call racist power.” (pg. 30–31 of the ebook)

The racist power in the progressive political ecosystem sits primarily with elected officials and secondarily with donors who fund their campaigns. In this post, I’ll focus on elected officials.

Our whole mission is to elect people to office who support the issues we care about. Issue advocacy campaigns are run to influence legislation, which is passed by the elected officials the campaigns helped get into office.

Most of the progressive and Democratic elected officials vocally support antiracist public policies. They simultaneously support racist policies in a different context — the industry that’s been built around them.

While this may be unintentional on their part (and I choose to believe it largely is), I want to be very, very clear: they are the only ones who have the power to fully and quickly transform our industry.

Elected officials hire their consultants, campaign managers, and appoint leadership to our party committees. They raise donor money to then pay those consultants, campaign managers, and party staff. They sign the checks. They approve the budgets. It is their attention that the issue advocacy organization is trying to get. It is their vote that the lobbyist is courting.

It will take their political will to force an end to racism in our ecosystem.

If they fail to exert that will, we can certainly make marginal improvements driven by the professionals in the space. But I can almost guarantee you that it won’t be good enough and it won’t be fast enough.

I tried to think of a personal anecdote to accompany this section. The truth is, elected officials failing to hire consultants or senior BIPOC is SO pervasive. If I name one situation, it makes it seem like it’s somehow unique.

Instead, I’ll challenge all of my colleagues to an exercise. This next week, every time you’re on a zoom call with senior staff and consultants, look around and ask yourself:

• Who is in the room // on the zoom?
• Who is speaking up?
• Who is stepping back?
• And very, very importantly — who is driving the decisions?
• Who is the final decision maker or the person who will make a recommendation to the candidate?

I imagine many of us will be a little ashamed. We will inevitably look around and realize how few BIPOC consultants and senior staff there are in decision-driving or decision-making roles.

“But we’re talking to White voters…”

You’ll hear this excuse a lot. Candidates will justify the lack of diversity on their consultant and campaign teams, because inevitably the “persuadable” audience in many election scenarios is White people.

That excuse doesn’t hold water, when…

… BIPOC make up 46% of Democratic voters. It doesn’t matter that BIPOC are not your “persuadable” audience. It matters that you are running to represent them.

…we assess voter sentiment, behavior, and attitudes through quantitative and qualitative research methods. We don’t need our consultants to represent all White people. No more than we need our Black consultants to represent all Black people. Or our Latinx consultants to represent all Latinx people.

This becomes an excuse to maintain the status quo. And it has. Let’s erase that excuse from our lexicon.

The gatekeepers

Candidates have direct control over who they hire as consultants. Caucuses and party committees (lead by elected leadership) should be called to task when they fail to support BIPOC consultants.

A former colleague of mine from the Warren campaign (Serefiana Day) is helping to lead the charge in Washington, where she and other primarily Black consultants have been able to demonstrate how pervasive racism is when it comes to hiring BIPOC consultants.

“…the percentage of campaign money that goes to political professionals of color is disproportionately low. According to the coalition, consultants of color worked on only 5% of legislative races in 2018, despite representing almost a third of the working political consultants in the state.” — Crosscut.com, 6/12/20

I imagine that the situation in WA mirrors many other states and is also a microcosm of the national picture.

The entire gatekeeper system of the way state caucuses and National committees “allow” for consultants to be on preferred vendor lists reinforces White consultant practices, while creating artificially high barriers to entry for less-established consultants, which — if we’ve done anything right in diversifying consulting in the last ten years — will also happen to include more consultants of color.

I’ve worked with state legislative candidates for several cycles, now. In the last few cycles, we’ve had the most diverse group of candidates we’ve ever seen raise their hands to run for office. And yet, when they take that bold step, they are often told by their state caucuses that they can only choose from a handful of consultants who have been “pre-selected” for them.

In one recent cycle, some of the consultants made no secret out of offering kickbacks to campaign managers (not illegal, but certainly questionable) who hired them. Others who I personally interacted with were openly hostile and rude to new candidates, most of whom were women, many of whom were women of color.

In one particularly egregious scenario, the candidate I was working with was a Black woman and she was basically told by the Caucus that she had to hire a particular (White) consultant or they would pull funding from her race.

She wasn’t a prolific fundraiser. She knew she needed the Caucuses’ support. I observed her consultants being openly rude to her and her campaign manager on a number of occasions. Behind closed doors (with Caucus staff leadership) the consultants mocked them both for “not knowing what the hell they were doing.”

It was enraging and completely unprofessional. But the Caucus’ elected leadership deferred completely to the hired staff. There must be systems of accountability and it’s on elected leaders to demand that accountability.

Elected leaders and candidates must lead the fight for racial equity and inclusion in the Progressive political ecosystem

I don’t have all the answers. I’ll say that again and again. But I do want to come at this from a place of finding solutions — not just pointing out problems. That’s what being a good ally and partner mean to me.

There are many steps elected officials and candidates can take to rectify these inequities and to institute anti-racist policies throughout the organizations that surround them.

I’ve started a running list of recommendations that I will add to each week, as I dive into another aspect of the racism within our progressive ecosystem. Please dm me on twitter if you have recommendations to add.

To stay up to date on this series, and more, please follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter.