My Post-election Rant

I have this idea – admittedly, perhaps a naïve one – that our representatives in legislatures should be, um, representative; that is, representative of the population. The people who make our laws should be in many senses similar to us, such as in socioeconomic and cultural background. They should represent a broad perspective on what life is like for the people they claim to represent.

So when I look at the portraits of the leading Republicans about to take over Congress and see nothing but white male faces (basically, people just like me, only a generation or two older and a lot richer) I doubt their ability to represent an increasingly diverse country. Somehow this concern about lack of diversity – lack of representation of women and minorities in the highest positions of power – is taken by the right as a form of prejudice. How dare anyone doubt that these privileged men with excellent pay and benefits and great pensions can faithfully represent the interests of people working for barely more than minimum wage and no benefits or sick leave?

For leading conservatives, though, even having empathy for such folks – especially if you’re a judge! – is dubious. Empathy may lead to making laws and policies that cater to the most disadvantaged in our society, causing the people to become spoiled and lazy. As a Republican lawmaker said not long ago, if you feed a stray cat, it keeps coming back for more. (Yes, he was comparing poor people to stray animals.)

If mere empathy for the disfavored in society is a dangerous thing, how much worse the suggestion that members of traditionally disfavored groups – minorities, women, minority women – might actually deserve proportional representation in government! Oh, the humanity!

Presumably the wealthy white men about to resume their control of Congress really have the best intentions toward serving all Americans, including those least privileged socially and economically.  But clearly they have failed to convince very many people outside of their demographic that their intentions are sincere. The Republican victory of last week relied heavily on the old and the white.

Lack of diversity is not an easy issue to address. Some may be content for elite institutions in business, academe and government to have very few women or minorities at the top, as is still the norm. But even for those who accept that this norm is not desirable, the solutions are not obvious or simple. Should we say, for example, that the government should have 50 percent women and 25 percent minorities? Such a radical policy would seem unlikely to generate the necessary support.

But an aspiration need not be an official policy. Where quotas have been mandated, controversy is understandable. It is absurd, however, to contend that discrimination by race is the same morally whether it is done to promote opportunities for minorities or to prevent them. Yet that is exactly what Chief Justice John Roberts said in ruling that a school district could not use race as a factor when deciding students’ school placement in order to promote more diverse schools: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” For the chief justice, discrimination that promotes a more diverse student body is no better than discrimination that excluded blacks from white schools before integration in the 1950s. This is such an outrageous contention that I cannot find the words to describe it. If you have sound reason to reject policies designed to increase school diversity, that is one thing. But if you don’t appreciate the difference between Jim Crow laws and affirmative action, you have no business in government, let alone on its highest court.

Lest I be misunderstood, I do not deny grounds for disagreement among reasonable people about affirmative action, or indeed any policy designed to help historically underprivileged people. Nor do I believe that the Republicans about to resume control of the House of Representatives mean any harm to underprivileged citizens. But people can hardly help representing the interests of those who supported them; and, in doing so, neglecting the interests of others. Republicans certainly represent (more aggressively than their rivals on the left) the interests of people with a lot of money. It is naïve to pretend otherwise. People living from paycheck to paycheck are not overly concerned about the tax rate on capital gains or inherited estates worth more than a million dollars, tax cuts that have long been high on the Republican agenda. It is hoped, of course, that by making the rich even richer, everyone else will benefit too. We’ll see, I guess.

When President Obama and the Democrats ran everything, there was concern that what is called the business community was being maligned and neglected (despite the small-business tax cuts the president signed into law). Wealthy Americans, it was alleged, were being unfairly attacked. Perhaps so, but they had the resources to defend themselves. With Republicans back in charge of the House, those neglected are likely to be those less able to defend themselves.