Friday, January 4, 2008

In Which Blue Is Tripped Up By Her Own Assumptions, But Still Wholeheartedly Supports Barack Obama

I was all set to write a post about how, even if you thought Obama was inexperienced or overidealistic, you should still vote for him because he would be the most likely to increase diversity in the executive branch.

I was going to link it to my post on color-blind casting, to wit:


The reason (I believe) that directors so often cast only a "minority" (pun intended) of non-white actors in performances, even in performances intended to be color-blind, seems correlated in some way with the way the director has experienced people "of color" in his/her own life. That is to say, if a director does not already have significant personal relationships with a diverse group of people, the director is less likely to give significant stage time to a diverse group of people.

and note that Obama would be the candidate guaranteed not to view "white" as the "default" color of humankind and thus save us from a government where the automatic assumption is that decisions are made by white people for white people.

I was going to close with the clincher; that increased diversity in Washington can only benefit the country, and that even if Obama himself is "inexperienced," he's likely to surround himself with smart people who can help him.

Just think about how much help Bush gets (and then think of how many of them have resigned/been removed from their positions for misconduct), and imagine it instead with Obama and his team of more awesome.

Then I did some research.

Do you know who currently has the most diverse campaign staff?

Hillary.

Obama's not even second. He's third.

(This graph appears on many news aggregators and blogs; I took it from Feministing.)

What's an Obamaniac to do?

2 comments:

Anon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Blue said...

Didn't know the Bush statistic. Thanks for sharing. ^__^

My question then now becomes: so if we have a diverse executive branch, with people from a variety of backgrounds (which Bush, arguably, has), why is our government still so bad at A. foreign policy, B. international understanding, C. intercultural understanding w/in the US, D. promoting the needs of anyone besides the elite (who are predominantly white), etc. etc. etc.?