B E A R I N G S

What Makes Diversity?
In the case of Bush’s cabinet, looks can be deceiving

by Denise Meringolo

Along with most of my neighbors in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, I was braced for the presidential transition. But in my case, Inaugural Week not only involved worse-than-usual traffic snarls, but also worse-than-usual political debating with conservative Republican friends and family members. They have already begun sniping at my progressive Democratic views with renewed enthusiasm.

The latest attack came in the form of a question regarding my opinion of President Bush’s Cabinet nominations. I remarked that they were a little too conservative for my taste. The response, with feigned shock, was, “But there are a number of women and minorities! I thought that’s what “we” wanted!”

By “we,” I assume he meant the left-leaning feminist academics with whom I am usually associated in the minds of folks who need to categorize. In that case, I’ll concede that the kind of diversity he referred to is what we wanted. It’s just not all we want.

The various civil rights movements that defined the1960s and 1970s - the Feminist Movement, the Black Civil Rights Movement, the Labor Movement, and the American Indian Movement, to name a few - transformed the political status of a variety of people. In the process, they stimulated a gradual change in popular perceptions about appropriate social roles for racial, ethnic, or gender groups.

But the transformation from slogan to law has revealed that “rights talk” can offer only limited change. Ensuring ‘diversity” in the color and shape of human bodies does not necessarily amount to ensuring ideological diversity.

Historically, successful social movements hinged on the argument that specific groups of people share a collection of experiences, needs and beliefs. There is some truth to this, particularly when the members of a group have experienced common oppression. African Americans had a common experience of segregation and violence, as well as a common lack of access to basic political processes. By demonstrating the depth and breadth of this racism, the Civil Rights Movement successfully pushed for new laws to ensure equal access to education, jobs and the vote.

Similarly, the core leadership of the Feminist Movement shared specific experiences. Most had honed their organizational skills in the Civil Rights Movement, but their inferior status within that movement led to their politicization as “women.” The resulting feminist activism led to an increase in legal rights and legal protections for women.

But even in the context of these two success stories, categories of identity began to unravel early. Inside the Feminist Movement, African-American women, lesbians, and poor women argued that their particular experience of oppression was distinct from that of heterosexual, middle class white women. The assertion of differences fractured the facade of a unified political identity.

The realization that identities are complex and that common experiences are difficult to measure has resulted in a significant shift in the way political theorists think about group formation and activism. During the past 20 years or more, they have moved away from seeing any identity as “natural” and have begun to unravel the myriad forces that function to create categories of race, ethnicity or gender. They have begun to ask what makes a female a “woman” or a person of color “black.” As intellectually intriguing as these questions are, they are difficult to translate into law and custom.

In one respect, the physical composition of the Bush Cabinet demonstrates the success of Civil Rights-era anti-discrimination policies, or “affirmative action.” Although often criticized as preferential, affirmative action is intended to ensure that under-represented groups are given equal access to higher education, professional opportunities and social organizations.

Underlying such policies is the argument that diversifying an organizational body ultimately will change its shape, form and content. In a real world sense, this belief implies that a white woman like Christine Todd Whitman or an African-American man like Colin Powell can transform the presidency simply by virtue of their presence in the cabinet.

But whether or not affirmative action programs led directly to the success of individual Bush appointees, the culture shift such programs represent has unquestionably produced a diverse and highly educated pool of experts and politicians for any president to call upon. Indeed, as Civil Rights-era activists hoped, a generation or more of American children has benefited from a variety of role models. However, in some respects, the success of these programs has meant the death or near-death of identity-based activism.

Always a bit shaky, the assumption that similarly colored or shaped bodies indicate similar experiences has proven increasingly difficult to sustain. While I am delighted that Bush has chosen a physically diverse cabinet, I am also certain that he has assembled individuals who represent a fairly uniform agenda and belief system. In this respect, they mirror more contemporary methods of political alliance.

These days, social movements are composed of strategic - and usually temporary - coalitions. The pro-affirmative action Powell fits into a Bush cabinet because he is also a staunch supporter of strong defense and suspicious of humanitarian military engagements. Although Whitman is pro-choice, she is suspicious of federal interventions on business profits. Alliances of this nature succeed as long as points of contradiction are kept secondary to points of agreement.

That is why, for me, this Cabinet represents only part of what I want. They demonstrate the best face of affirmative action because, at least in appearances, they are a diverse cadre of well-educated and successful individuals. It is still important to ensure that everyone has equal access to the means by which such success is possible. But as earlier feminists discovered, I cannot necessarily identify with Whitman (or Condoleezza Rice or Gale Norton) on simple account of gender. Our experiences and opinions diverge in areas and on issues I consider most important to the larger “body politic.” To imply that our sole and primary aim is the placement of women, African Americans and other minorities in positions of power is a gross oversimplification of the aims of contemporary feminism and progressive thought.

And that is not what I want.

Denise Meringolo is a Ph.D. candidate in the American Studies department at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She previously wrote about how race complicates historical interpretation.

Related Sites
From the Washington Post, profiles of the Cabinet nominees, plus text and video from the nomination announcements.