Biden’s drive for diversity in top political jobs is only an illusion of change

 

     Biden’s diverse picks, the “very best of the nation”, are not representatives of the people who put them into office as much as they are figureheads. They are ambassadors with no brief other than to stand as proof of meritocracy – if you work hard and are “the very best”, you too can get a great gig. Diversity in government isn’t about solidarity, it’s used as proof of the soundness of the system: the elevation of women in particular as “girl boss feminists” who will not be interrupted, the reduction of the deeply serious business of government to inspiration politics.

     It’s irritating and it’s infantilising, but it can’t be dismissed. There is real value in inspiration politics. To be able to see people who look like you in exclusive places is undoubtedly important. It unlocks confidence and ambition. And there is political capital in caring about the brand of the party and its reputation as inclusive. But when it all stops there what we end up with is a counterfeit form of liberation politics that achieves little beyond letting parties (and businesses) get away with a smattering of new faces.

     This could be the start of something positive. But it could equally be a dead end. Diversity has two paths. The first is one important means with which to address the structural inequalities that produce the marginalisation of those groups in the first place. The second is an end in itself. In a sort of identity relay race, women and people of colour are handed the baton, carry on running, and serve to bless and reinforce the racial and economic status quo.

     Increasingly, liberals are opting for the latter: a commitment to diversity that promises cosmetic changes without deeper transformation.  When people are hired to make a government “look” a certain way, by governing parties with conservative politics, it’s usually a way of making change so everything stays the same – or gets worse.  The clue to the lack of potential in Biden’s diversity drive is in the fact that these appointments so far have been received with relief as a return to business as usual.

 

      We cannot forget that it was under the “standard” and comparatively “boring” Obama administration that the Black Lives Matter movement started. Diversity in this form is a phantom lever, a device that is unconnected to any mechanisms of power but gives the illusion of change.

 

 

     In the euphoria of Donald Trump’s defeat among liberals, I noted on social media an impatience with those who didn’t join in the festivities. “Some people are never happy,” the celebrants complained. If our expectations have been so severely lowered that we are to be grateful for the mere presence of visual diversity in regimes that have failed us for so long, then there is indeed very little to celebrate.