Controversial opinion: I want to hear way less about racial & gender diversity in elected government.

Since 2001, the number of POC in Congress has grown every term — except for a brief, minor dip in 2009. Overall, we’ve gone from 63 POC in Congress to 137 POC. Same thing with women in Congress — in that same time frame, we’ve gone from 62 Congresswomen to 128. These statistical trends also hold for LGBT in Congress. And while I’ve been giving national examples, these statistics hold for state and local governments as well in a very general, broad sense. In other words, our current government is the most diverse government we’ve ever had.

At the same time, disapproval of government and the perception of government as dysfunctional are at an all-time high.

To be absolutely clear, this is not an indictment on minority groups, or even necessarily an indictment on our collective perception of minority groups per se; this is an indictment on the reality of structural power and the ways in which structural power has been expressing itself in our institutions and shifting.

The uber-wealthy in this country — disproportionately white men — have not disappeared, nor have their pursuit of power disappeared. Indeed, rich white men still maintain almost all the positions in the top companies, in the Super PACs, in the lobbying halls — in all the things that control Congress, more and increasingly more so with each passing year, with each passing decade.

Again, I’m not saying any of this is a conscious choice. That’s precisely my point.

Way more important than electing women/POC into government is electing the women/POC who will actually help “disenfranchised” communities.

Way more important than even that is de-stabilizing the fundamental structures that wish us harm in the first place.

In 2011, when I first immersed myself in the social justice world, the fundamental spirit of the movement and its language acted as a destabilizing force. Back then (for example), most people did not know what the word “cisgendered” meant. Today, in 2024, I confess my deep concern that perhaps too much of the spirit of social justice has been subsumed into Capital — and I mean this both in a larger vaguely metaphysical sense as well as straight-up literally. Nowadays, we have certain Capitalists fighting over literal trillions of dollars as part of the ESG (i.e., environmental, social, and corporate governance) Movement. Oh, if only the social justice warriors of 2011 could see us today — the absolute tragicomedy of it all.

Of course all the fundamental observations of the social justice movement remain true, perhaps more so nowadays than ever — we live in a deeply inequitable, racist, sexist, etc., society that divides us, decreases our quality of living, and shrinks down the human spirit.

At the same time, it seems to me that the broader social justice movement has been beaten down and bruised — the right-wing have organized their messaging rapidly. Right-wingers understand their arguments — and their spirit of their arguments — much deeper and more broadly than the Left. In more ways than I care to speak of, we are losing.

I think it would be easy to say something like, “Well, that’s why we need a broad, multi-racial, militant, organized movement of the working class.” Like, duh. And how do we do so when this country is so divided among basic racial and gendered lines.

And I’m not sure what to do about that — other than to point out what I see, communicate what I perceive as clearly as I can, and start a conversation.