by Ijeoma Oluo
Many of the hardships women face in the workplace are due to the overvaluing of white men. How many times in recent years have you heard the argument that a white man shouldn’t be fired for sexual harassment or other gross misconduct because it would “jeopardize his future” or “waste his potential”? Every white man in business is pure potential. Every white man from unpaid intern to CEO could be our next great leader, our next great innovator. To harm the trajectory of any white man—no matter how incompetent, no matter how many women or people of color he stepped on or groped along the way—would be a risk too large to take.
But what are women worth? What would it look like to value us and our potential? What is the risk of destroying our careers before they even start?
Industries and institutions—and larger societies—that believe in women’s leadership potential, even if it looks different from what tradition dictates, will invest in the careers of women from beginning to end. They will care about how girls are taught in school; they will create internship opportunities that help women along their path; they will look for and nourish the strengths of individual women. They will create family leave and child care programs that allow women to grow their careers without sacrificing their families; they will adopt strong and proactive policies to address sexual harassment and assault in the workplace so that women feel safe and don’t have to split their energies between focusing on their jobs and avoiding being groped by a supervisor. When we believe that women can and should lead, we value their skills, talents, and potential in the boardroom and the executive offices, but also in product development, finance, advertising, engineering, and everywhere else. When we believe that women can and should lead, we unleash the potential of half the American workforce. Even if we can’t guarantee that every woman promoted to CEO will outperform her male counterpart in company growth or profitability, the important benefits for workplaces and the broader society of elevating women to positions of power will always be worth the risk.
CHAPTER 6
SOCIALISTS AND QUOTA QUEENS
When Women of Color Challenge the Political Status Quo
“What’s your major?”
That’s a question every college student is asked more times than they can count. When I was in college and would answer “political science,” the follow-up question was almost always: “Are you going to run for office one day?”
My answer was always a swift no. I was studying political science because I was a politics nerd who looked at electoral processes with the same fascination that science nerds looked at chemical reactions. I would answer that I hoped to maybe be a political analyst for a few years and then maybe a teacher. The behind-the-scenes work suited me better.
But also, I would joke, I would never pass any personal vetting during an election cycle.
I was keenly aware that I was a Black woman. I was a Black, single mother with shitty credit, a few questionable romantic decisions in my past (and future), and some pretty liberal political views that I didn’t seem to be able to shut up about. Some of my earlier political memories were watching Anita Hill and Lani Guinier getting torn apart by mainstream media. I saw their political ideas twisted and used to discredit them. I saw their personal lives put on display. I saw how friends and colleagues turned against them. I did not want that for myself or my children.
Instead of becoming a political analyst or professor, I eventually became a writer. And even though I don’t write about the inside-baseball of politics like I once thought I might, I write about political issues. My education has served me well in this career, even if it was not what I originally imagined for myself. It also, like a job as an analyst likely would have, fits my introverted yet very opinionated personality. I spend a lot of time observing, thinking, commenting. I do not have to compromise my principles or soften my message to make friends or keep a job (I have certainly lost a gig or two, but the beauty of freelancing is that editors have short memories and you do your best to move on to the next one). And I do a lot of it in the privacy of my own home—sans pants.
The personal insults and slurs started fairly quickly. In the comments sections of my articles I’d be called a “dumb bitch” or an “ugly nigger.” People soon started dropping my personal information into comments as well—information about my children or past jobs. The death threats came pretty quickly too, if not as frequently.
To my knowledge, 2017 was the first time I was doxed. Doxing is when someone posts your home address, email, phone numbers, financial information—pretty much anything they can find on you—online for people to do with what they wish.
In 2019, my home was swatted. Swatting is when somebody calls the police from a phone number in your neighborhood and states that there is some violence or threat of violence happening in your home in order to have an armed SWAT team sent to your house. In 2017, a swatting led to the death of a Kansas man, who made the mistake of lowering his arms when a SWAT team showed up at his home out of the blue. In my case, a caller pretending to be my son phoned the police and said that he had shot his parents to death. Six officers holding rifles pulled my son out of our home at six a.m. and searched our house.
If I hadn’t become aware before the swatting that my personal information had been placed online, the situation could have been much worse. But I had received notice that my address (and my mom’s address, and my sister’s and brother’s addresses) had been placed on a website that specifically encourages swatting. I had called my local police department and let them know that they might be called to my house on a swatting attempt. So even though they still sent an armed response to my house, they did so knowing it was unlikely that they were going to find two dead bodies inside. It meant that when my sleepy teenage son opened the door and saw police and then quickly shut the door so he could put his shoes on, they didn’t open fire. I cannot tell you how often I’ve played out worse, alternate scenarios in my head since that happened.
The website that posted my personal information had listed me as an “antiwhite” writer and had included links to my articles on racial justice and to my previous book, So You Want to Talk About Race, in order to incite harassment and even violence against me.
A few days after the police showed up at my door, my mom started receiving harassment at home. A few more days later, somebody tweeted out my social security number.
In my career as a writer, I have been able to speak more openly on social and political issues than any other Black woman I know. I do not have to worry about being fired from my job; speaking out is literally my job. I do not have to worry about losing friends—I lost all the ones who were going to leave a few hundred articles ago.
But my children and I have had to spend quite a few nights away from our home for our safety. I have had my email hacked, my financial information compromised. My sons’ schools have reached out to make sure there are safety plans in place for them there. I’ve received so many death threats via email that they have their own folder (which I’ve titled “fan mail”). Armed police have been sent to my house looking for my dead body.
And still, that is nothing compared to what many of the women of color in political office—women like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley—face every day. They face threats, insult, and harassment on a level that I can’t imagine. All for being women of color who dare represent their populations and therefore challenge the status quo.
Twelve years after finishing college, and I can still confidently say that there is no way I’d ever run for office.
As I write this, we have white men holding major political office who believe that global warming is a hoax. We have white men holding major political office who believe that racial integration is bad for America. We have white men holding major political office who believe that women can’t get pregnant from rape. We have white men holding major political office who believe that there’s nothing wrong with being a white supremacist. We have white men holding maj
or political office who have been accused of sexual assault. We have white men holding major political office who have publicly used racial slurs. We have white men holding major political office who believe that Muslims should not be allowed into the country. We have white men holding major political office who have physically assaulted reporters.
These white men can say and do those things with little worry for their careers. In fact, for some of these men, it is their careers. Even openly defending white supremacy will get you little more than a slap on the wrist. To be a white man—a straight, abled, cisgender white man—in public office means never having to say you’re sorry and still getting reelected.
This freedom means that a full range of white male concerns and viewpoints are centered in our government. Those vying for the white male vote can appeal to either the white male environmentalist or the white male climate-science denier. They can represent the socially liberal white male or the fiscally conservative white male. They can stand for the white male socialist or the white male sexist. White men can run for office on their deeply held, most daring beliefs—or they can run on the most jaded of party lines. Either way, they are unlikely to see the entirety of their personal life used against them; they are unlikely to face an endless barrage of threats for daring to believe they should be heard. They will be able to be the most radical without being branded as too radical. They can be the most violent without being branded as violent. The most racist without being branded as racist. They can focus almost exclusively on the needs of white men without being branded exclusionary or divisive.
Women, people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people—they are afforded no such grace. Those of us who wish to hold office must have personal lives beyond reproach; we must be sure to moderate our political views. We must hold degrees from traditionally white institutions, or be able to prove that our education at schools of color did not radicalize us. We cannot appear to ever be angry. We must always prove that we are willing to prioritize the concerns of white men in our work no matter how few are in our constituency.
So while just about every flavor of white man in America is going to have at least a few representatives in their government, the rest of us are lucky if we have any. One Latinx person in office is supposed to represent the needs of all Latinx, Black, Asian American, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander constituents. One woman in office is supposed to represent all women of varying races and ethnicities, sexualities, classes, and political ideologies.
It is psychologically damaging to never see yourself reflected in positions of leadership in your own country. It limits our feeling of citizenship, and it limits the possibilities we see for ourselves and our children. It creates a feeling of unsafety. Growing up, I can count on one hand the number of friends of color I knew who thought that holding political office was a possibility, let alone a goal.
Even more damaging than the psychological toll is how this exclusion limits the ideas that make it into government. The diversity of problems discussed, solutions offered, and priorities debated in our government often fails to reach beyond those of white men—usually the most privileged of white men. The political and social failings of our society are most likely to hit marginalized populations first and hardest. Our communities have, in lieu of social and political assistance, developed our own mechanisms for identifying and addressing these issues. Our solutions are often, by nature of our political exclusion, outside the box. Our work and creativity have kept us alive and helped us thrive when the odds were stacked against us.
Those of us who have been systemically marginalized in the American political process are certainly not the only people who are frustrated with our current government. We are not the only people who think that our government is out of touch, out of date, sluggish, and uncreative. The system was set up to appear to serve the average white American man while simultaneously working against the best interests of the majority of Americans, regardless of race or gender. But even the pretense of representing the “average white man” holds more appeal than political ideas offered up by those who aren’t white men, even when those ideas could better serve white men.
When a cause for public concern centers issues impacting communities of color or poor communities—even if the same issues also affect white communities or more affluent ones—it’s considered fringe. The crumbling infrastructure that affects the drinking water of the residents of Flint, Michigan, is a national issue that affects many poor communities—poor white communities and poor communities of color. It is likely to impact middle-class communities as our infrastructure ages and we continue to avoid paying for its upkeep. But when the community most injured has a majority Black population, then it becomes a problem that is easily written off as a “Black” issue until it grows too large to ignore or fix.
Likewise, police brutality devastates all communities and families of all racial and ethnic groups. Black and Indigenous people are approximately three to four times more likely to die in an encounter with police than white people—but in 2015 and 2016, 1,158 white Americans were killed by police officers.1 Over half of all people killed by police are disabled. Even though many hundreds of people are killed by officers every year, between the years 2005 and 2018, only thirty-five officers were convicted of a crime connected to the deaths of civilians; only three of those convictions were for murder.2 We should all be concerned about the lack of true oversight and accountability in our police forces. It makes us less safe and undermines our democracy. But because the people most likely to be killed by police are Black and brown, and the people most likely to be police are white, and the police have long been known to serve white America’s interests, many white Americans have decided that to stand for police accountability is to be antiwhite, and that those who offer real solutions to end police brutality are the enemy.
Then there’s political gerrymandering, which has been undermining our democracy for centuries. If political control of a state changes parties in between the US Censuses that take place every ten years, state representatives scramble to redraw voting districts to maximize the impact of their voters and marginalize voters most likely to vote for the other party. Across the country, large pockets of populations are silenced in the electoral process because of this process. People of every political party and every racial demographic reside in districts that are subject to gerrymandering, and it impacts how services and dollars are distributed as well as who gets elected into office, local through national. Gerrymandering also enables elected representatives to effectively write off large portions of their constituency to focus on those who they think will most benefit them and their party. Because gerrymandering has been used most effectively by the Republican party to undermine Black and Latinx votes, and because those who most loudly raise the alarm about the devastating costs of gerrymandering are often people of color, it is an issue that many white Americans have felt safe to ignore, even those who identify strongly with American values of democracy.
I have seen this phenomenon in my own work. I am not someone who thought that racism was defeated when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. Very few people of color did. I have spent years writing about issues of race and gender in America. I and many other writers on social issues have long raised the alarm on the violent racism and sexism in this country, and the ways in which it is encouraged in various corners of the web and on social media platforms. Yet when the 2016 election put a misogynistic white supremacist in the nation’s highest office, I was inundated with messages and emails from liberal white people asking, “How did this happen?” Overnight I went from being someone who wrote about “Black issues” to someone who wrote about their issues. People came to me looking for answers, and all I could do was point them to what I and so many other writers and speakers of color had been saying for literally hundreds of years and ask, “Where have you been?”
I shouldn’t have to write any of this. It should be enough that these issues are impacting communit
ies of color. We should care about what is harming our fellow human beings, even if it affects only their communities and not ours. It should be enough that this is hurting us. It is insulting that I have to point out the ways in which these issues also hurt white Americans in the hopes that I might get more people to care.
It is not simply that many white Americans do not care; it is that many white Americans are so invested in the political exclusion of people who are not white men that they will actively work against any political change that would meaningfully enfranchise women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people—even when they are aware of the potential costs to their own well-being. Many have decided that the psychological benefit of looking at government and seeing a room full of white men is worth the very real cost to their financial and physical welfare. Somehow, even though history has shown that it is not the case, many white Americans are still able to convince themselves that listening to the same people they’ve always listened to will pay off for them in the end.
In the meantime, those who work to represent the voices of marginalized people and to bring new ideas into our government are not only fought every step of the way by their peers and rivals, they often face torrents of threats and abuse as they do so. And they continue to push back against a status quo that does not want them to be heard—not only because they truly believe in what they have to offer, but also because they know that their community desperately needs them to fight.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM DECIDES TO GO FIRST
I do not believe that in 1972 the great majority of Americans will continue to harbor such narrow and petty prejudices. I am convinced that the American people are in a mood to discard the politics and political personalities of the past. I believe that they will show in 1972, and thereafter, that they intend to make independent judgments on the merits of a particular candidate, based on that candidate’s intelligence, character, physical ability, competence, integrity, and honesty.