How many times over the past few years have you read or heard a plaintive “at last” from someone glad that they see someone who represents themselves on television, or in a classroom, or as an executive, or in sports, or a movie hero, or as a politician, or many other roles that have historically been denied to minorities? My experience is in the dozens or hundreds. Representation is important - one might say critical - in creating a united society in which all groups can feel that their needs and concerns are being noticed and responded to.
That representation must be more than mere tokenism, so that the single minority example doesn’t feel the weight of representing the entirety of the minority or feel outvoted every time an issue arises.
To take one long term example, look at Saturday Night Live. In the beginning the sole black cast member was Garret Morris. The six white players were the default go-tos in almost every sketch. Morris either was relegated to a bit part or served as The Black in a few sketches.
Today, SNL is far more diverse. Some sketches can feature nothing but black cast members interacting. Those sketches were impossible until the numbers started to equalize. Hispanic, Asian, and gay cast members also are available to play parts that draw on timely people and subjects, which are far greater parts of the public conversation than they were in 1975. No doubt, the writing staff is also far more diverse than it had been. (The women in 1975 complained about the lack of women writers and the default to male sketches.) White writers - straight white male writers - cannot deliver truths from a lifetime of living outside of the default the way minorities can. Even with the best of intentions, their default will be the same old white perspectives about the world.
Saying that white performers and writers adequately capture the full American perspective is obviously wrong. Cable tv and streaming services and movies are full of shows that are written and star minorities across the board. They are noticeably distinct from white-driven shows. And they seem to draw upon audiences that were not viewers of the shows that did not represent them. That alone cannot be dismissed as a factor in hiring.
Nowhere in the real world can anybody draw up a 1 to 1000 list of the best candidates and draw a line under the number needed. This is true for college admissions and choosing corporate CEOs as well as talk-show hosts. That “best” can - must! - exclude a lifetime of different experiences from the white default, which also include fighting and rising up against the white default (remember the feminist saying that a woman must be twice as good as a man to get half the pay). If a minority candidate has outside qualifications that are equal to those of a white candidate then it is extremely likely that their minority status gives them extra points which should automatically mean they are the better option.
Somebody above said that colorblindness is similar to saying that all lives matter. I heartily agree. Nobody here is disagreeing that being blind to color (or other minority status) isn’t an ideal to strive for nor that all lives do truly matter. Neither belongs in this discussion, though. The saying that Black Lives Matter sprang from the way that the powerful treated black lives as if they don’t matter. Representation of image springs from the way that the default minimizes minorities.
As a connoisseur of irony, today’s world gives me gifts every day. I’m an old white man, which means that people look at me and judge me from nothing other than my appearance, making assumptions about my beliefs and actions. Sound familiar? I can understand why other old white men find this discomfiting, and wish for a solution that does not make their appearance representative of the unfortunate behavior of others who look like them.
Maybe there is one, though I’ve never seen any other than the slow process of working toward a more accepting society. But endlessly repeating ‘just hire the best people’ sure ain’t it.
