When I was in college in the ’80s I worked a summer job in the investment department of a big corporation. This part of the company managed a couple of billion dollars in assets, so they had a lot of MBAs from big-name schools. They were all white and mostly male. The company had a diversity program, so the department’s management was told to hire someone brown.
Management resented that they were forced to do that, so they engaged in some malicious compliance by hiring a black college athlete who had barely graduated from college. He was such a terrible writer that one of the managers hired the English teacher from his kids’ private high school to give this guy writing lessons. He partied hard, came to work late, and generally fucked up. After a few months, he had learned the game and quit because he had found a better job. The now-smarter management scoured the rest of the company to find another black man and gave him a giant promotion. This guy had better work habits and could write, but he knew nothing about investments. More tutoring ensued. For all I know, that guy is still working there today.
The way that this company treated the black men it hired didn’t tell me a lot about African Americans. But it sure told me a hell of a lot about how the older, white managers thought about African Americans. They couldn’t conceive that a black person would be qualified to do a MBA’s job, so they didn’t even bother looking for a qualified applicant. Even though they wouldn’t have looked twice at a white male with the same qualifications, the man they hired was unfireable because they needed a token, and because they were pisspants scared that he would turn around and accuse them of racism.
This was the ’80s, and the people running the department had grown up in the ’30s and ’40s in a very segregated city. If I went to the same company today, I’d be surprised to find the same attitudes. That’s why I just don’t why Michael Steele is still working at the RNC. I thought full-on tokenism of the type I experienced in the ’80s went out with shoulder pads and ankle warmers.
BR
Nah, not in GOPland.
I mean, they still cling to the notion that only white straight Christian males can be truly impartial judges / justices.
John S.
Your thesis shares much in common with the plot of Trading Places. Combine classism and racism, add a dash of politics and junk science… what a great fucking movie. No wonder the opening score is from The Marriage of Figaro.
Sly
@John S.:
When I read the part about the second man needing to be tutored in investments, this scene immediately came to mind.
Cacti
At the moment, there is one black Senator in the United States Senate, and he received the position via appointment.
Boudica
I am convinced that part of the problem with the country today are all these MBAs. At my husband’s company they bop around from dept to dept, staying only about 12-18 months before moving to the next dept and up the ladder. They haven’t a clue about the industry they work for. It’s all bs and doublegoodspeak and ass-kissing coming out of them, only in it for themselves, not caring about saving the company and the industry. I always thought it was Reagan who turned the car towards the cliff, but now I’m thinking it’s the MBAs from the 1980s on that pressed on the accelerator.
TR
As said above, not in GOPland.
This is a party that imported a batshit insane figure from out of state to run against Obama in 2004, a party that considered a former Ohio secretary of state and Maryland lieutenant governor to be huge figures in their party because they were black, and a party thinks a clinically diagnosed mute like Clarence Thomas is a brilliant participant in oral arguments.
ksmiami
Because, for Republicans, it is perpetually 1983. They.have.not.evolved. Also, with some of the social attitudes, it takes almost an entire generation to die off before acceptance is a reality.
geg6
It’s the same as their treatment of women. You have your FOX News blonde and busty fembots with not a brain cell in evidence and you have your Caribou Barbies and they can’t understand why women across America loathe them and flock to vote Dem. They are utterly convinced of their prejudices and seek every opportunity to create situations to confirm them.
I cannot ever understand or try to empathize with conservatives on these matters. The whole movement is sociopathic and I just can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve heard their arguments for at least 40 years and that is the only conclusion I have come to about them. No matter how reasonable one of them may sound, the result of their policies is always an addition to the misery of anyone not white, male, and highly privileged. To not see or not care about that is sociopathic, IMHO.
Starfish
Michael Steele likes power and money.
Had he been a Democrat while in Maryland, he would have been just one of many black Democrats. Being a Republican made him special and gave him a lot of visibility whether he had the talent to be a candidate on the level that he was. I think the same thing goes for the national party. While he is there, he can spend the money, make some connections, so long as he can put up with a little embarrassment, and he is not going to be fired easily.
sparky
i think you are conflating image with tokenism. Steele is for public consumption (that is, a sign), so what he does or says is, strictly speaking, not relevant. in contrast, tokenism presupposes the person functions as a part of an institution.
i find it surprising that people still don’t get that the Rs are the first true postmodernists, or if you prefer, hyper-realists.
Observer
@TR:
“Corporate-for-profit-land” == “GOP-land”. Just sayin’.
With one or two notable corporate exceptions, such as a few companies the high tech industry, this really hasn’t changed much since back then. It’s just way more subtle.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Just go deep into the heart of any inner city black neighborhood, and ask around.
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
pickledjazz
Because without the RNC, he is nothing. A not very bright fellah with no real talent!
Cat Lady
Michael Steele and the RNC are perfect for each other, and can’t quit each other. It’s a match made in hell. He’s a grifter, and they need a token black to put on a minstrel show for the teatards. He’s happy to oblige them while he runs his own con out the RNC back door. Win win.
D. Mason
You will have tokenism as long as you have someone saying “you must hire a certain percent of minorities”. The reality is that some people don’t want “those kind” in their company and if you force them to hire an employee they don’t want to hire they will make it into a joke or worse. For some, lashing out is a natural reaction against being made to do something outside their own wishes.
New Yorker
I think this is at least partly true. We now live in a world where (pardon me if I get misty-eyed) an African-American like Stanley O’Neal can pocket millions while driving his company into a ditch just as well as white men like James Cayne, Dick Fuld, and Chuck Prince. God Bless America!
jrg
@D. Mason: This. From a business perspective, most of the time race is irrelevant (not always – a team’s racial diversity can help in some customer-facing roles, and diversity in religion helps a lot during the holidays).
I think tokenism is a backlash against what is seen as an arbitrary hiring requirement from an outside party that’s neither an owner, employee, or customer – in other words, it’s a requirement put forth by someone who has absolutely no skin in the game with respect to the success or failure of a business.
It’s a predictable response.
shortstop
And zero black Republicans in the House. There hasn’t been a single black Republican member of either house, in fact, since JC Watts left in January 2003.
scav
@D. Mason: True, but on the flip side, most of us were forced to eat our veggies as kids
but we eventually grew up, figured out they were part of a balanced diet and (gasp!) even tasted good. Well, except for certain forms of Brussels Sprouts. But I did learn to eat them politely and, because I’m all grownup now, wash them down with wine instead of milk.
daveX99
From the TPM link:
I feel like I’m living in a house of mirrors. From Sherrod to Steele, I’m all like, WTF? It’s a madhouse. This includes the Ground-Zero-Mosque/ADL kerfuffle.
My mind is fully boggled.
Mary
Clearly you haven’t been watching the runways lately. ’80s fashion is like a horror movie villain that just won’t die.
matoko_chan
is Kain our token conservative? is that why he doesnt have to…. like ….actually perform?
matoko_chan
wallah……it is tokenism….for IQ
50 years of race-baiting has resulted in an undeniable race gap between parties…..obviouso 50 years of IQ baiting has resulted in an IQ gap.
sloan
This is the 10s, and the people running the country grew up in the 60s and 70s when open racism, homophobia and sexism was commonplace. The Republican party has become a haven for many of those with backwards attitudes and hateful impulses.
It looks like the GOP may win the House despite their race-baiting and gay-bashing. This will only serve to empower and embolden the worst of the worst among them as they’ve pretty much come out of the closet with this shit and gone all in with a strategy designed specifically to scare the hell out of Old White Folk.
While this may seem brilliant in the short term, I can’t help but wonder what it will do to the Republican party as the minority-majority generation of voters emerges after seeing a GOP composed almost exclusively of old southern white men pissing on them and their non-white families for their entire lives.
It’s weird that we all know the demographics and we all know what the future holds in terms of who the next generation of voters will be, but for some reason we have one of the two major parties shitting all over the future majority and rubbing their faces in it.
I’m an average straight white guy and I refuse to vote for Repubs. Their stance on gay rights alone is enough to automatically disqualify them. It disgusts me to the point where I can’t even consider supporting them. I can’t imagine being a young black woman or the child of minority immigrants or gay or lesbian. It must be infuriating, yet the Republican party is seemingly oblivious to the way they are perceived and can’t fathom a world where they are outnumbered and punished for their behaviour.
I’m very pessimistic in the short term but in the long run I truly believe that we are going to see a massive shift away from the GOP as their base dies off. And everything they are doing right now will only make it harder for them to rebuild a durable majority in the 20s and 30s.
Time marches on!
matoko_chan
@sloan:
it did this….
50 years of race-baiting has resulted in an undeniable race gap between parties…..obviouso 50 years of IQ baiting has resulted in an IQ gap.
dig that misogynistic creeper–
Douthat is proposing we develop some other meritocratic values because conservatives are no longer good at Jefferson’s “talent” and “virtue”…..at meritocratic values. The natural aristoi can arise in any population segment, look at Obama. But natural aristoi are driven out of conservatism, or self-select out.
The answer to Douthat’s concern trolling of meritocratic values is to make talent and virtue more important than demagoguery and race-baiting and IQ-baiting in conservative ethos.
HeartlandLiberal
I hate to disillusion you, but you have not met and tried to talk with my relatives down in Alabama.
Not only are they not past the 80’s…
Not only are they not past the 60’s…
Some of them are right in the thick of the current GOP thinking that wants to gut the amendments to the Constitution passed in the wake of the aftermath of the Civil War.
After all, they truly want their nation back, one apparently in which white males had all the power, the money, the vote, and blacks, and of course women, too, knew their place, be it 3/5 of a person or chattel.
It was just so much easier on them then.
maus
They want someone to call the liberals “the TRUE racists” but simultaneously fuck up so bad that nobody ever looks at them badly for not promoting anyone of color to high positions in the Republican party again.
elm
Great. Now all I can think about is Michael Steele in shoulder pads and ankle warmers.
CarolDuhart
@HeartlandLiberal:
But Alabama is no longer a factor in anything anymore. These folks can’t get their country back, because it isn’t their country anymore. Last year more children of color were born than white kids, and the next years will be even browner. And there ‘s nothing they can do about it, and nothing that will change it. Hardly anyone is immigrating from “white” countries thanks to a good social safety net, and those who do are way more liberal than even the Democrats
This is the angst of lost power, like aristocrats who now must adjust to a meritocracy and watch their kids marry the children of people they used to look down on. The world has stopped holding them up, and they don’t know how to adjust peacefully, which is why we have the teabagger tantums.
ThresherK
the plot of Trading Places
Wasn’t the late John Belushi originally cast in Eddie Murphy’s role? But, yes, for a good screwballing about general human dignity (gender and race aside), “Trading Places” does the ’30s in style, a cross between, say, “My Man Godfrey” and “Trouble in Paradise”.
In my ideal world it would be a cautionary buzzword, the same way one married man can be counted on to chirp “boiling bunny!” to another who is considering cheating on his wife.
mclaren
You misunderstand. The GOP didn’t hire Michael Steele out of tokenism, they hired him in order to give themselves cover when they launch dog-whistle racist attacks at Obama.
“See,” the GOP can say, “we _can’t_ be hurling veiled racist epithets at that DUSKY BROWN ANGRY president, because, ooohhh, ooohhhh, look, our chairman of the RNC is also dusky and brown.”
The fact that Michael Steele is grossly corrupt and incompetent is a bonus to the GOP base, because to them it proves that all dusky brown people are inept Sambos best kept far away from the levers of power.
token
you fucking idiot OF COURSE people reacted to a mandated “diversity” campaign by finding the most untalented unqualified hack they could lay their hands on. that’s what people do when confronted with demands/orders they don’t like: they do everything in their power to undermind them. how are you shocked by this?? this is the inevitable consequence of implementing “diversity” by fiat
Citizen Alan
@CarolDuhart:
That remains to be seen — it depends on just how fascistic the Neo-Confederates are prepared to become in defense of “culture and heritage.”
This post about Steele also reminds me a widely spread theory about why McCain picked Palin as his running mate: she was simply the prettiest and most presentable female conservative. The theory postulates that the Republicans in 2008 were simply not capable of conceiving of a woman who was actually qualified to be president. Obviously, then, all those people who vigorously supported Hillary must have really done so only out of a PC liberal desire to see a woman in the Oval Office regardless of whether she was qualified or not. Naturally, when Hillary did not get the nomination, of course all those PC feminists would mindlessly gravitate towards the GOP if McCain picked a female running mate. Granted, there were plenty of female Republicans who would have made a credible VP candidate (Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Libby Dole spring to mind), but such a candidate might have gotten some funny ideas and mistakenly thought that they were entitled to have a say in policy matters. Better to go with a vapid beauty queen who can string together boilerplate slogans but is otherwise a complete ignoramus. That way, they get both the dogmatic feminists and the good ole boys who liked Palin because they thought she looked like a naughty librarian.
Honus
@D. Mason: except nobody says that. There is no law that says any company has to hire any percentage of minorities. It just says you can’t refuse to hire or fire a person because of their race, gender, or age.
Just like the teabaggers complaining about the spanish language signs in Lowe’s, or having to press “1” for English. That’s not any law, that’s an economic thing. The companies do it because it’s profitable, not because the government makes them.
Even in the schools, it’s not a mandate as much as a adapting to demographic reality. And that’s what the wingnuts can’t abide.
Honus
@sloan: “This is the 10s, and the people running the country grew up in the 60s and 70s when open racism, homophobia and sexism was commonplace. The Republican party has become a haven for many of those with backwards attitudes and hateful impulses.”
The people who grew up in the 60s and 70s were also the first generation that undid institutional racism, sexism and homophobia. Those prejudices were the status quo for every preceding generation. You take it for granted that racism, sexism and homophobia are evil and unacceptable because you were educated by the boomers. Granted, it didn’t take for the whole populace, but a lot of us got it.
Honus
@Citizen Alan: “The theory postulates that the Republicans in 2008 were simply not capable of conceiving of a woman who was actually qualified to be president… Granted, there were plenty of female Republicans who would have made a credible VP candidate… Better to go with a vapid beauty queen who can string together boilerplate slogans but is otherwise a complete ignoramus.”
Pretty much perfectly describes their favorite president, St Ronnie, and GWB, most of the men they nominate, too.
Pontious Pilates
Uh, have you noticed that the 80’s are back in a big way? Kid-n-play haircuts, neon nikes, ankle warmers and 16 candlesesque sunglasses are all the rage again. Not to mention the intense musical plagarism going on with all things new wave. It makes perfect sense that the GOP has adopted the same token stance of yore.