“It’s more complicated when it’s about your own children,” said a New York City liberal years ago, reacting to “diversity” efforts in his kids’ school. It’s also more complicated, apparently, when it’s about your own power and position — then, suddenly, Diversity™ may not seem so appealing.
Just ask 2024 candidates Adam Schiff and Katie Porter; they could tell you. That the Democratic California congressmen are both vying for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the late Dianne Feinstein isn’t sitting well with some fellow liberals; in fact, they’ve been told to “sacrifice their egos and ambitions” and cease their affirmative inaction — and why?
So that a black woman can have the Senate seat.
To heck with what the voters want, apparently.
As site Career Step Up put it recently, “the issue of diversity in California’s upcoming Senate race has taken a contentious turn,” with the suggestion that Schiff and Porter should step aside in favor of U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee raising “questions about genuine equality and the role of race in politics.”
Pointing out that the appeal was made by podcast host Steve Phillips in the far-left Washington Post, the site later wrote that the author “asserts that diversity is a core value of the Democratic Party and suggests that White Democrats should demonstrate their commitment to this principle.”
Uh, yeah, I’m sure Schiff and Porter will get right on that, Stevie.
Making his argument, Phillips wrote last month, “Time and again, it has been shown that Black women are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. Democrats across the country agree that Black women are badly underrepresented in our nation’s leadership.” Really? They are?
Phillips obviously means “underrepresented” in a racial-bean-counter sense; in reality, though, black women have “representation” just as everyone else does. In this non-racial, significant sense of the concept, they have congressmen and senators who represent them in our national legislature. You’ll only disagree with this if believing that a person (or a “minority” in particular?) can’t be represented by an individual of a different race.
Is this true, though? I’d be wonderfully represented by Thomas Sowell or Alan Keyes, black men both. But if this racialist thesis were true, what’s the implication? How, for example, is Phillips’ desire any different than a defendant saying he didn’t want to be represented by a lawyer of a different race? What about an entertainer saying he didn’t want to be represented by an agent of a different race?
If white is white and black is black and ne’er the twain shall meet, then should we just cut to the chase and partition the country along racial lines right now? Ask Phillips.
Moving on, Phillips proceeded to lament black women’s alleged “underrepresentation” and then added, “Schiff and Porter are White; Lee is a Black woman. The right course is clear, isn’t it?”
Uh, elect the best person for the job?
(Impossible, I know; the best person isn’t on the ballot.)
Phillips then continued:
It would be [clear], anyway, if the participants had the courage and principles to follow it: Schiff and Porter should step aside and reembrace their vital leadership roles in the House. And the rest of the state’s Democratic leaders should walk their talk and throw their clout behind Lee’s bid for the state’s full six-year seat in the Senate.
Why is electing a Black woman to the Senate in California a moral imperative?
Consider the numbers: Before becoming vice president in 2021, Kamala D. Harris was just the second Black woman ever to serve in the Senate, after Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) in the 1990s. With [the appointment by Gov. Gavin Newsom of Laphonza Butler, a black woman, as Feinstein’s replacement], that’s three Black women in more than two centuries.
True. And a Senate seat has never been occupied by a primordial dwarf, an Amishman, a Hasidic Jew, a microcephaly or acromegaly sufferer, or someone of Formosan-aborigine descent. What’s the point?
Actually, Phillips does have one: The Democrats have made diversity a dogma, claiming its superficial variety is an end unto itself. On this basis white men have lost positions in police and fire departments and elsewhere. In politics, getting more Hispanic “representation” was supposedly so important in Port Chester, New York, that the powers-that-be actually forced the village to give every resident six votes (yes, really) to realize the goal. But these “remedies” are for the little guy.
“Diversity” is never for the pseudo-elites.
Martha’s Vineyard liberals sure didn’t like it when third-world migrants were flown to their idyllic little isle. They have enough gardeners, after all. So those people “just seeking a better life” were outta’ there fast.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is all for affirmative action — but then used it to advance her own career, claiming to be Indian. Why, did you think she was going to sacrifice her lily-white self for the cause? (That’s for blue collar people, people.)
As for the Golden State Senate race, the irony is that Schiff, Porter, and Lee are carbon copies of each other — in the only way that matters. Just ask the left-wing Sacramento Bee.
The paper admitted in June that their House voting records made it “difficult to tell them apart.” The trio “received perfect ratings from the AFL-CIO and the Human Rights Campaign in their latest tallies,” the Bee continued, and “Schiff supported President Joe Biden on every key vote last year, said the Congressional Quarterly vote study. Porter was at 98% and Lee at 97%.”
So Californians have a choice: A politician who sides with Biden about 100 percent of the time, a politician who sides with Biden about 100 percent of the time — or a politician who sides with Biden about 100 percent of the time. But then there’s what really matters:
One candidate has an XY genotype and sanpaku eyes, one an XX and an adipose-tissue-replete body, and one an XX and high epidermal melanin content.
Can’t you see now how all important diversity is?
