Unpaid Internships Promote Racism

written by Audra Grassia, edited by Loryn Wilson Carter

Series Note

This is the fourth post in a series about racism in the progressive political ecosystem. You can read my previous posts on my medium page, here. There you will find some definitions and explanations of the point of view I bring to this writing.

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.

My Own Identity

As I start to tell more of my own story through this post, I want to acknowledge that my identity as a Latina in this space is fraught.

I benefit from White privilege through and through. My original last name (Tafoya) is clearly Spanish to people who know, but totally ambiguous to people who do not know (which is most people). My current name is clearly not Spanish. And I simply look White.

I have often shied away from self-identifying as Latina, because I don’t like addressing the confused look on peoples’ faces. I don’t like having to justify my identity to people. It’s uncomfortable and I’m riddled with shame and guilt by virtue that I do benefit from White privilege.

While my lived experience is real, it doesn’t represent Black people’s lived experience. It doesn’t represent Brown people who are first or second generation or who have a more identifiable Spanish last name. It simply represents my experience and the lessons I’ve learned from that experience.

Political Entry Points

When I first started off in politics, I got really lucky.

In politics, relationships are everything. I’ve always been conflicted about this fact and frankly, it has put a chip on my shoulder. I didn’t come from money. My parents weren’t wealthy donors and they weren’t politically involved.

My parents were divorced and we moved every three years. On my father’s side, we were 5th generation Colorado Hispanics (the term my family has preferred for generations). I self identify as Latina.

My grandfather and most of his brothers built fences and ranched and my father didn’t finish college after he finished an enlistment in the Army. He always got by, but it wasn’t until later in life (when I was about 15 years old) that he got a job working as a truck inspector with the state of Colorado. Until that time, he didn’t have stable jobs and I remember a lot of summers eating mostly canned foods and really struggling to make ends meet. At one point, we lived on a trailer that was parked on my grandfather’s land where we would literally fetch water from a well for the day.

My mother was — for half my young life — a single, working mom. She was a career Naval Officer and to this day her biggest fear is falling into poverty. She worked her way from absolutely nothing, when she divorced my father, to being able to put a clean and stable roof over mine and my sister’s heads. She also had a second career after serving 20 years in the military, and has gone from once penniless to now a successful and comfortable retirement in the suburbs of Houston.

Elizabeth Warren often says she “grew up on the ragged edges of the middle class.” Well, I felt like I grew up smack-dab between “dirt poor” and “doing all right.” Perhaps that’s exactly what she means.

Had it not been for a few lucky breaks early in my career, I don’t know how I would have found myself in an actual political career.

The scarcity of extra money in our home(s) also meant that I worked starting when I was 15 years old and really could never afford to stop working. I even got a job as a Resident Assistant (while I simultaneously had other jobs), so that I could get free housing in college.

My first job in politics was at a political communications firm in Austin, Texas. These were my first “connections” in politics.

Looking back, I have to give immense credit to James Aldrete, who owns the political communications firm Message, Audience & Presentation — MAP for short — that gave me that first internship.

Not only did James have the foresight to understand that — in order to attract diverse talent, you need to be willing to pay people who wouldn’t otherwise have the luxury to afford an unpaid internship — but he did so at a time when VERY few others were offering paid internships.

He could have easily kept those profits for himself and hired more privileged interns. But he didn’t. Myself and my fellow interns were primarily Latinx. He was trying to bring up a new generation of talent that didn’t look like the all the White, male consultants in DC. And whether it was particularly intentional or not (I choose to think it was), it had a profound effect on my life and I imagine many others.

Even now, James is one of a handful of Latinx consultants in progressive politics and while the numbers of BIPOC folks in Democratic politics have grown — they haven’t grown fast enough and they haven’t been promoted to leadership positions fast enough or consistently enough.

That’s what I mean, when I say “I got lucky.” I happened to work for a consultant who cared about increasing representation in our space. I happened to get an internship that I never even would have looked at, had it not paid, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

My first job with MAP led me to my second job, working in the TX State Legislature, working for a young liberal, Latino legislator. There, another Latino colleague encouraged me to apply for a training program at EMILY’s List, then called Campaign Corps. You may be sensing another theme, here. I was also lucky because I was living in Texas. I am Latina and I was working for Latinos. I saw examples of Latinx leadership all around me. I never questioned my ability to be a Chief of Staff, because I had examples in the flesh, who I could talk to and who were willing to mentor me. I had the unique privilege of learning from them and they were invested in my success. This happened to me because of the demographics of my geography and it happens for young White people all the time. But we know this doesn’t happen as frequently for many BIPOC.

Until I left Texas, I didn’t totally understand what a problem this was for other people of color, for women, or people who hold other identities that are underrepresented in our space.

Inequity in Unpaid Internships

Poverty rates are higher in Black and Latinx populations in the United States than they are among White populations. Unpaid internships benefit the economically privileged — people who can afford to spend a summer or a semester without income in order to gain valuable professional experience. That leaves behind anyone who cannot afford that choice and it disproportionately leaves behind Black and Latinx young Americans.¹

This insight is nothing new. But if we’re going to address it, we need to keep talking about it and stop pretending like unpaid internships are “okay” in service of the greater mission.

How Can We Work to Fix the Problem?

There are now movements to pay interns — on Capitol Hill and in politics. More and more progressive orgs are starting to hold themselves accountable for paying interns. And there are now even organizations like the progressive Pipeline Project that specifically focus on identifying college students (primarily from public and community colleges) to get paid internships in politics and advocacy.

But elected leaders, donors, and party leadership should make a commitment to pay interns, whether they are in an office on the Hill or knocking on doors in your community. They must also be honest about the differences between an intern, who will show up day in and day out for a full-day’s work and a volunteer, who may come in for a few hours here and a few hours, there.

In order to begin to remedy the damage that decades of unpaid internships benefiting the economically privileged, Democrats must not only pay interns, but pro-actively recruit interns of color outside their personal networks (which are likely made up of people who mostly look like themselves).

We must stop prioritizing hiring well-connected children of big donors, elected officials, or other party elite.

We also must start looking for “interns” and other entry-level staff in non-traditional places. As a movement, we talk about jobs training programs for displaced workers or for previously incarcerated people. Why aren’t we, as a movement, recruiting those same people to learn how to be organizers within their very own communities?

There are certainly some programs and organizations that do this, but it’s not common practice in the Democratic party or candidate/coordinated campaigns. The vast majority of field organizers are young, college graduates. But anyone who has been an organizer knows that you don’t need a college degree to be effective doing this kind of work.

Conclusion

Once I was trained at EMILY’s List, my career was launched. I made national connections, many I have still today. They taught me how to write my resume, how to interview, and connected me with campaigns cycle after cycle, to help find my next job.

But I never would have gotten there, had it not been that first paid internship offered to me by a person of color. Now imagine how our industry would change if every person of color was given paid opportunities at the beginning of their career. Imagine how that would exponentially expand the range of opportunities that they could reasonably explore. What would our industry look like if we actually became the change we wanted to see in the world?

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[1] It obviously also leaves behind economically disadvantaged White young people. However, that’s not the focus of this article.