Fearless Futures Podcast Q&A Episode 3: What About Political Diversity?

Interviewer: Hi, you’re listening to the Fearless Features podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Naima McCloskey, the CEO and founder of Fearless Futures. And this is the show where we unpack and interrogate mainstream methods for equity and inclusion. I’ll be sharing new perspectives as well as alternative approaches we have developed and deployed working in daring companies across sectors around the world. Each week, we will explore a new angle you won’t want to miss. So stick around.

In this episode, I’ll be sharing answers to questions we’ve received from listeners of this podcast series. As we release earlier episode, lots of people got in touch to ask questions that had come up for them. Realizing there was probably a lot going on for folks, we also opened up the opportunity to ask any questions in our newsletter. Over the course of this episode, I’ll be offering the answers to a select set of questions that we received. Enjoy!

In this episode, I’ll be answering the following question. What about political diversity?

Now to respond to this and to provide an answer, I think it’s best that we start with the word diversity. Now, diversity does mean a mix of different things typically brought together at its kind of most-simplest. And while that’s often what it’s taken to mean at face value, when we’re thinking about diversity and inclusion, bringing different people together, you’ll probably have noticed from previous episodes, when we at Fearless Features are thinking about the term diversity, we’re not just saying any difference can be brought together or should be, or that we should invest in bringing that together. Instead, we’re using the term to mean that we should be bringing together those who have been historically marginalized.

So the diversity, we’re not really that keen on the term, to be honest. But if we were to use it, it would be about kind of honoring the diversity that is possible on the planet. And that does exist on earth, and has on since the beginning of time, but with a focus on those who have been historically marginalized and here are the subjects of oppressive systems. So diversity, in that sense is, it has a very specific angle and direction. And ultimately, this understanding of diversity if we were to use it, and we do also necessitates a power analysis to look at who has been disenfranchised by systems of power, and therefore focusing our efforts on challenging, interrupting that dynamic in our pursuit of diversity. Because without pursuing that diversity, what we’re left with, of course, is that those who are the beneficiaries or the positive targets of systems of oppression are the default people. And so you might have a mix of those identities. It’s a mix, that of those who do not experience oppression and who are those beneficiaries of oppression. So you might have a mix of people who are white, and non-disabled and heterosexual that is diversity, but it’s not challenging or interrupting the oppression that we would argue this work should engage with.

Now, if we don’t have this definition of diversity, we can end up sort of down the rabbit hole thinking that any differences that may exist among any kind of group of people are by definition, dealing with challenging that disenfranchisement and the exclusion that we see being the product of oppressive systems. And if we have this idea that just any difference is the goal, then we could actually end up in a world where the status quo very much remains the same. So we could look at any sort of axes of difference and conclude that well, Bob loves the Beatles, and Sally hates them, but loves the Supremes. And Joe loves Bob Marley dah, dah, we’re done. And we could still not have dealt with these underlying systems of oppression that prevents certain groups from being present in our workplaces. So just having lots of people who are different because there are differences even among white people or non disabled people would not resolve the concentration of power that we should be concerned with and therefore we wouldn’t be getting anywhere unless we have this very specific lens. So therefore, in order to consider whether a certain group or certain issue should be the subject about diversity efforts, we first need to establish whether they are the subject of a system of oppression, right. And then that’s our key criteria that has to be a starting point as to whether or not we engage in work, therefore, to target and challenge that, that consequence.

So therefore, to turn to this question of political diversity, in order for that to be the subject of our resources of our energy of our thinking, we would first need to establish whether oppression exists on the basis of political party affiliation, say in the USA, on your report, the country in which we’re operating. And in conclusion, political affiliation of a political party does not meet our criteria for a system of oppression. And to kind of remind you on what that involves, our first episode is what is the system of oppression. And I probably suggest that it’s a great place to kind of keep revisiting in order to kind of strengthen our collective muscles of being able to analyze and diagnose whether something meets that criteria or not.

But for those of you who have not listened to that episode, I’ll quickly run through why political party affiliation does not meet the criteria needed to name something a system of oppression. So there are three key components to a system of oppression, the first are negative ideas about a group. The second is the existence of structures. So that’s laws, policies and institutions that enforces negative ideas. And the final thing is negative outcomes that are produced from the two former components that are generated on mass for the group that’s negatively targeted by the system.

So in the context of political party affiliation, what we would require a negative ideas about those who are members of a political party, because of their affiliation, and membership of that political party. And you’d also therefore need conversely, positive ideas attributed to another group based on their political party membership. The second thing we’d need are then structures that give power and enforce the negative ideas that we have about my political party. So we’d need laws, policies and institution to be working against those who are members of that political party. And they would need to have a historical basis and be a historical process that is lived out also in the present.

And then finally, we would need to have negative outcomes on mass for the group, who are the members of that political party, negatively targeted by the system. And those negative outcomes would look like, diminished access to housing, they look like employment — negative employment outcomes, they would look like incarceration, they would look like negative health outcomes, and so on and so forth.

So why is political party membership not a category of oppression? Well, that’s because there isn’t a political party that meets the above criteria. There are, of course, negative ideas that circulate about the members of political parties. But this is, of course, multi directional. And when I say that, what I mean is, there exist negative ideas about members of various political parties across the political spectrum by their political opponents, and those who aren’t members of that political party. Society doesn’t have a favored political party that has positive ideas attributed to its members at the expense of those in another political party, who have negative ideas ascribed to them. And then as we take the next step of the ingredients, we look at structures. We can see that there aren’t any laws, policies or institutions that give power and enforce any of the negative ideas that may exist, that would then sort of creating on mass negative outcomes for people who are members of a political party, because of their membership of that political party. That is to say, members of the Labour Party in the UK, or the republicans in the US are not experiencing challenges to their participation in education or housing or employment, or what have you, on the basis of their membership of that political party. As such, there’s not a party that experiences oppression and is therefore worthy of the resources and energy required to challenge that oppression, that we would deem the purpose of inclusion efforts, at least not within the Fearless Features paradigm.

It’s worth noting that there are periods in history where political party membership or even association has been closer to an oppression. For example, I’m thinking of the 1940s and 1950s during what’s often called sort of McCarthyism America. And for those who aren’t familiar, this was a period named after the republican Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. It did however, start before him sort of what we associate with McCarthyism did start before him, but it’s McCarthy who famously alleged that sort of communists were taking over America and kind of were deep within various departments of government. And McCarthyism has come to mean, and precisely what happened in the US context, which is the kind of fear mongering that emerged that was associated with the political repression of communists, as well as any alleged communist sympathizers.

And so during this period, we have the negative ideas about communists that were widely held and propagated. And crucially, we also had structures in place that were enforcing these ideas. So to give an example, Harry Truman signed an executive order in 1947, to screen federal employees for association with organizations deemed totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive. There was also the establishment of the House Committee on American activities, which was the most prominent active government committee involved in anti-communist investigations during the period. And it famously investigated the people who became known as the Hollywood 10. And I’ll pop a link in the show notes for those who’d like to read more about that.

So, as we can see in this example, what we also have is negative outcomes on mass for those who either work communist — were communist sympathizers, or those for whom they left leaning sort of beliefs were exaggerated by the fear mongering that was rampant at the time. And those negative outcomes included many people suffering loss of employment, whole careers sort of decimated, due to blacklisting that occurred at the time. And this was because people had very serious fears about being even associated with anyone who was suspected communist at the time. And also, we see at this period in terms of those negative outcomes, in some cases, as in the case of the Hollywood 10 and for others, people were actually imprisoned for their political affiliation. So I use this example to say that there may be periods in history where political party affiliation is much more aligned with an oppression, because it does meet all three of the necessary ingredients. But what I do think we see is that it’s rarely sustained over periods of time in the way that we know to be the case for racism, disablism, classism, colonialism, and so on. And so therefore, it doesn’t have the historicity that we have with oppressions, that are so called precisely because they readily meet that criteria.

So, we could stop there. And we could just say, as you know, I think it would be fairly sensible what political party affiliation does not meet the criteria of oppression, therefore, it doesn’t merit the energy required to pursue diversity in relation to it, because there is not a political party that is subject to the historical process that exists as a continuum into the present shaping and organizing society. But what we do know is that sometimes political diversity comes up in organizational context and there can be thinking that it should be something to pursue an agenda an worth-while engaging one’s resources and energy to kind of tackle.

And I would say that we’ve seen this most commonly in the USA, especially in Silicon Valley, and in the world of tech and social media, where — and this has been widely reported in the media, they’ve been op ed pieces written about this question. And it’s — in some of these cases of companies that have been the subject of newspaper articles, it’s been whether or not they are too Democrat, for example. And I think when I’ve been sort of pondering the response to the kind of listener that shared this question and kind of thinking about the wider context while I’ve seen this, play out the most, and kind of be featured in our mainstream thinking, I think that at its core, this question of political diversity is actually striving for an idea of balance or neutrality, really thinking that, well, if we can have the same number of Democrats as Republicans, then we will be neutral, for example.

Now, I think the first thing to kind of engage with if that is what’s going on is that there is no neutrality. And additionally, working towards inclusion and equity is not a neutral process. It is an angle, it is an agenda, it is a direction and purpose and is necessary and people need to apply their energy from one area into another in order to get to that end destination. It is about movement towards something, it is about building, and therefore it is not neutral. And so, we can’t therefore seek to both have neutrality, if this is — if what I’m kind of wading into a desire for political diversity is kind of speaking to, as well as have a commitment to inclusion and equity because we know that the latter requires a direction, it requires taking a stand, it requires mobilizing energy and resource, none of which are kind of neutral. They are about prioritizing. They’re about making choices, again, not neutral processes.

And so, to take that to the kind of dimension of political diversity, it therefore doesn’t really make a huge amount of sense. It wouldn’t be in service of equity, if we decided that to truly be diverse, for each person who believed in universal healthcare, we had an equal number of people in our organization who were committed to eugenics. Eugenics being a position that ultimately D values the lives of people made poor, disabled people and people of color, as it ultimately sees the forced sterilization of such groups and has done when it’s been deployed through history, as eugenics ultimately, means kind of at its root means born well. And so it sees certain groups of people as less than others, and therefore, enact the deliberate erasure of those groups. This position that of eugenics is obviously not in line with equity principles.

Additionally, positioning Democrats and Republicans, for example, United States, or the Labor Party and the Conservative Party, as opposites in all regards, actually, it raises the ways that systems of oppression, inform and infuse and work through all political parties, because political parties are just as much a part of society as anyone or as anything. So, I can think of policies that are shared in the UK, for example, between labor and the conservatives prevent, for example, which I’ve spoken about in previous episodes, was the brainchild of the Labor Party in the early 21st century, and it has been continued by the conservative government when they have been in power, so there are many areas of policy that are actually shared, overlap as political paradigm shift, and a certain things that perhaps are on the fringe of political discourse, become central and become part of the mainstream. There’s a huge amount of flux, therefore, in how political parties articulate themselves, the ideas that they’re committed to and the policy positions that are part of their platform.

To give an example, in the American context, I could share the ways in which immigration policy has been articulated and narrated by political parties is consistent. There is a consistency between the democrats and the republicans thinking about the work of Harsha Walia, her brilliant book, Border and Rule, which I highly recommend or if you’re looking for a shorter version, I’ll post the link to a podcast episode on the intercept that she has done recently, clearly delineates the connections between the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to immigration policy. Going all the way back, for example, most recently to the Clinton administration, the State of the Union address in 1995, spoke about aggressively securing the borders about how they were going to be new border guards about the kind of the pride in deporting twice as many aliens to use the language of President Clinton at that time.

And that, is a consistent theme within mainstream politics. This needs to kind of expand migrant people from the United States. Of course, those ideas are rooted in colonial and racist logics about certain people, removing the rights of certain people to move movement across the world, of course, has been happening for millennia. And of course, it raises the fact that some people, white people, rich white people are able to move around the world wherever they want, without any limitation. Corporations are also able to move around the world wherever they want in order to secure the labor that they require for their profits. So there’s an asymmetrical immobilization of certain groups of people, but the free movement of capital, as well as certain groups of people, those white rich people that I’ve mentioned before, but to go back to looking at this thread, we see that this, the State of the Union, for President Clinton in 1995, we then see that Obama spent $18 billion in 2012, the budget, he didn’t spend it personally, the budget for I-C-E or ICE, the kind of immigration control agency in the United States was $18 billion, and was larger than the Combined Federal law enforcement agencies of all the others combined. That was where Obama was spending tax paying money.

And then, of course, we have the Trump Administration as the most kind of recent articulation where, those on the left liberals, so called progressives have thrown their hands up and kind of, been very disgusted, should we say, by certain actions of the Trump Administration, but perhaps without seeing those historical continuity, as I said, harking back to the ways Obama also was in favor of militarized border. Also the way we saw that with the Clinton Administration. And then it’s also no surprise, therefore, that despite Joe Biden sort of proudly, vowing to reverse Trump’s immigration policy, photos have emerged of children in detention, in cages in the United States, under his watch. And so we have to ultimately reckon with the fact that political parties, by-in-large, in the mainstream reproduce the very narratives that we know are central to oppressive systems, because they aren’t part of these systems, as we all are.

And to distinguish between political parties and to see very hard and fast differences on call themes that we know such as immigration are mobilized, and our tools and our enablers themselves of racist ideas, for example, and racist discourse, and therefore racist policy as a follow on without saying that we’re sort of in a little bit of a delusion. Notwithstanding the conceptual points I’ve shared, there are some further areas to consider when it comes to political diversity. On a very practical level. When we’re challenging oppressions in our workplace, if we’re interested in robust change, we need to focus on the structures internally. So the policies and processes that are the kind of architecture of our companies, because it’s these that produce the conditions that lead to the negative outcomes on mass for the groups targeted by the impression.

As such, because political party affiliation is not an oppression, as I’ve kind of explored and been through, there aren’t actually any structures for us to engage in changing. So, I’m not even actually sure that there’s any system level action that could be taken in the context of political diversity, even if it was our stated goal. Additionally, people’s political party affiliations change all the time. That’s why political parties campaign for people’s votes. And this is another practical reason why this goal isn’t achievable.

Now, as a side note, it’s worth kind of having in our minds that the — the law isn’t always a useful barometer of what’s right and wrong. But it is worth noting that political party affiliation is not a protected characteristic in the UK, or the US at a federal level, though I do understand that there are a few states that do have protections in place in the United States. And it might be that the fluctuating nature, or at least the possibility for fluctuations and fluidity when it comes to political party alignment for people may be part of the reason why this is the case. So, I obviously don’t know about the intentions of the lawmakers in these particular instances.

And finally, there are political parties whose objectives are absolutely contrary to equity and inclusion. And I think what this means is that if you were a company, centering political diversity, or at least saying that it was an area that needs to be attended to as an inclusion matter, you are also saying that you will intentionally platform and welcome those perspectives internally. Because you said that political diversity is as important as the other areas of concern. And I’d go out on a limb and say, the other oppressions that are an area of concern for you.

Now, what this means is that you are almost certainly going to counter any of the other meaningful efforts that you might have underway that are actually dealing with oppressions. Because the reality is, that there are simply some positions and actions that are irreconcilable. And you all have sure seen, or heard me say this in previous episodes, with equity and inclusion. And at least that’s how we conceive of it in the Fearless Futures paradigm. And so in those instances, we do actually need to make a choice about what it is we seem to be prioritizing. And for some political parties, there will be an in compatibility with equity and inclusion in its deepest and most meaningful sense.

Thank you for listening to the Fearless Futures podcast. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe, rate and share this episode with a friend. If you’re interested in learning more about the work that we do at Fearless Features, please visit our website fearless futures.org till next time.