To your last point, yes, affirmative action is the term the U.S. has decided on for programs such as that one. There may be newer phrases in use, I don’t know for certain.
I would agree on the ‘lazy’ argument. It certainly feels like we could do better. But that always seems to be true!
I have on a personal level had to learn to avoid letting perfection get in the way of improvement. Whether that is broadly applicable to policy is debatable—I would welcome much more radical change, but I also feel as though radical action in one direction spurs more radical opposition. For instance, Biden tried to forgive $430 billion in student debt in the U.S. and it was in the news, argued over, eventually stopped due to some absurd court cases—yet he and his administration have successfully gotten about $132 billion forgiven in other avenues, step by step, with much less fanfare and thus (in my mind) much less opposition as well.
In regards to the German Green Party, and to for the moment ignore the question of additional genders, I thought that there were currently two co-leaders, one man one woman? If that is not the case, and even if it is, I assume the argument would be along the lines of ‘women have been underrepresented for so long that it is reasonable to give them a stretch of overrepresentation in order to bring a semblance of balance around.’ Or ‘other parties are mostly led by men so we will be led by women for some semblance of balance.’ Neither concept seems crazy to me.
And on the question of alternative gender presentations I think the issue is one of how to enact the greatest good for the largest number of people. The rights and representation of trans, non-binary, etc. peoples matter very much to me, knowing several such people personally! But collectively they do at the moment make up a small portion of the population. I think they should be encouraged to do whatever it is they want with their lives. If that is to pursue office with the Green Party, so be it. Such a thing seems like it may take a change in language to ‘allow’. But it does not mean the rules are bad conceptually or that they need to be thrown out—more inclusive language seems like a small change that does not require a change in the direction of progress.
That’s the ‘affirmative’ side of affirmative action—taking an action like encouraging trans people to run for office. Temporarily banning men from holding office wouldn’t really fall under the umbrella in spirit I suppose, but isn’t the outcome the same, and thus whether or not you take offense at the concept a personal choice, or at least worthy of a philosophical debate?
Visiting again the concept of laziness: just appointing women to leadership positions does not make everything fair. For instance, the disabled may suffer more social exclusion under female leadership, because women tend to see disabled children in terms of the additional child raising work they represent (of course, mostly men’s fault for pigeonholing women as homemakers). But this is a reason to improve the course we are on. It is okay to critique, to point out the ways that things are not going the right way. For instance, feel free to complain about how the focus on social justice overshadows the larger issues of economic injustice that hold everybody down! Feel free to point out groups that are being forgotten. Individuals who benefit from affirmative action and then turn around and preach self sufficiency. Personally, I think men’s mental health will need to be a bigger focus! It’s clearly an issue, and since they’re still mostly in charge it’ll probably benefit us all if they get some help. Whatever your critique, it should be in the spirit of fostering a world where your genitals or skin color or the neighborhood you’re born in does not determine your life’s course.
But it should not critique the concept. We should not reverse course and say “we were wrong, put men back in charge of everything and don’t let brown people live here.” And that is what I think being against affirmative action means. It means “no thanks, I am okay with the deal as it stands.” The deal as it stands, where in the United States you can accurately predict someone’s income just by knowing what ZIP code they were born in; where despite Hillary Clinton’s career women are underrepresented lucrative fields like the sciences because they’re still expected to put their future on hold to raise a couple’s children; where despite Barack Obama’s success black men are more than four times as likely to have felony convictions than white, taking the community’s right to vote away. That means, whether the person saying it is part of the in-group or a well-off member of a minority group, that they have enough, and aren’t interested in helping others get enough. I’d be embarrassed to say something like that.
Sorry I rambled on so much, I am “stealing time” at my job and lost my train of thought a few times as I left and revisited this comment. :)
Sorry I rambled on so much, I am “stealing time” at my job and lost my train of thought a few times as I left and revisited this comment. :)
Totally didn’t do the same thing…
Anyway, I mostly agree with you, just fyi regarding the german green party: Annalena Baerbock was their chancellor candidate, Habeck was effectively what in the US would be a president’s running mate. A duo, but Baerbock was iirc always going to be chancellor if the greens got a majority. And yes, they have joint leadership of the party.
That policy has to do with the german voting system, where each party has to provide a list of candidates for each state. Then according to how many votes the party gets, proportionally many people from that list get into the Bundestag, the list is in order. And that’s the one that had to alternate.
The greens as of last federal election are big enough to where this effectively isn’t going to single out anyone, they will get a few candidates from every state into the Bundestag. However the principle of forcing the gender of slot 1 just left a bit of a bad taste. Still voted for them and will most likely do that again.
Just some extra detail that I think you might have been missing about the German electoral system. #1 spot doesn’t refer to the leader of the party as this comment sort of seems to imply.
Germany uses a voting system called Mixed-Member Proportional. In it, you vote for your local candidate exactly the same as you would in America or the UK—using first past the post. But then you also vote for your favourite party. And there are additional seats in the Bundestag (congress) that are not tied to a particular region, but are instead used to “top up” the total of the Bundestag so that its party representation is proportional to the wishes of the voters. So if 10% of voters want the Greens and 20% want SPD, then 20% of the seats will be SPD and 10% will be Greens. If a party wins more seats in local elections than it is owed proportionally, it gets no additional people. If it wins fewer local elections than its national party vote percentage, it gets topped up using its party list. The #1 spot on that list will be the first person elected under this system, unless they also won their local race, in which case it goes to #2 instead, etc.
MMP is a really good electoral system, and honestly it’s probably the one I would advocate for and would encourage Americans and Brits to advocate for in their respective countries. Though I would replace the party lists entirely with a “nearest loser” to eliminate the problem @[email protected] describes. I’d also prefer IRV be used for the local part of the election, though that might be overly complicating it for some. Having those proportional top-ups means third parties not just can earn a place (which is what IRV by itself does), it actually guarantees that they will earn a place, if any sizeable number of people want them to. No more Nader ruining it for Gore; instead, Nader’s party will actually have representatives elected.
So looking back at the example they described about Germany, if we ignore local seats for the sake of simplicity, if the Greens are owed 1 seat, that seat will always be a woman. If they’re owed 2 seats, they’ll have a woman and a man. Owed 3 seats and they’ll have two women and a man. Etc.
To your last point, yes, affirmative action is the term the U.S. has decided on for programs such as that one. There may be newer phrases in use, I don’t know for certain.
I would agree on the ‘lazy’ argument. It certainly feels like we could do better. But that always seems to be true!
I have on a personal level had to learn to avoid letting perfection get in the way of improvement. Whether that is broadly applicable to policy is debatable—I would welcome much more radical change, but I also feel as though radical action in one direction spurs more radical opposition. For instance, Biden tried to forgive $430 billion in student debt in the U.S. and it was in the news, argued over, eventually stopped due to some absurd court cases—yet he and his administration have successfully gotten about $132 billion forgiven in other avenues, step by step, with much less fanfare and thus (in my mind) much less opposition as well.
In regards to the German Green Party, and to for the moment ignore the question of additional genders, I thought that there were currently two co-leaders, one man one woman? If that is not the case, and even if it is, I assume the argument would be along the lines of ‘women have been underrepresented for so long that it is reasonable to give them a stretch of overrepresentation in order to bring a semblance of balance around.’ Or ‘other parties are mostly led by men so we will be led by women for some semblance of balance.’ Neither concept seems crazy to me.
And on the question of alternative gender presentations I think the issue is one of how to enact the greatest good for the largest number of people. The rights and representation of trans, non-binary, etc. peoples matter very much to me, knowing several such people personally! But collectively they do at the moment make up a small portion of the population. I think they should be encouraged to do whatever it is they want with their lives. If that is to pursue office with the Green Party, so be it. Such a thing seems like it may take a change in language to ‘allow’. But it does not mean the rules are bad conceptually or that they need to be thrown out—more inclusive language seems like a small change that does not require a change in the direction of progress.
That’s the ‘affirmative’ side of affirmative action—taking an action like encouraging trans people to run for office. Temporarily banning men from holding office wouldn’t really fall under the umbrella in spirit I suppose, but isn’t the outcome the same, and thus whether or not you take offense at the concept a personal choice, or at least worthy of a philosophical debate?
Visiting again the concept of laziness: just appointing women to leadership positions does not make everything fair. For instance, the disabled may suffer more social exclusion under female leadership, because women tend to see disabled children in terms of the additional child raising work they represent (of course, mostly men’s fault for pigeonholing women as homemakers). But this is a reason to improve the course we are on. It is okay to critique, to point out the ways that things are not going the right way. For instance, feel free to complain about how the focus on social justice overshadows the larger issues of economic injustice that hold everybody down! Feel free to point out groups that are being forgotten. Individuals who benefit from affirmative action and then turn around and preach self sufficiency. Personally, I think men’s mental health will need to be a bigger focus! It’s clearly an issue, and since they’re still mostly in charge it’ll probably benefit us all if they get some help. Whatever your critique, it should be in the spirit of fostering a world where your genitals or skin color or the neighborhood you’re born in does not determine your life’s course.
But it should not critique the concept. We should not reverse course and say “we were wrong, put men back in charge of everything and don’t let brown people live here.” And that is what I think being against affirmative action means. It means “no thanks, I am okay with the deal as it stands.” The deal as it stands, where in the United States you can accurately predict someone’s income just by knowing what ZIP code they were born in; where despite Hillary Clinton’s career women are underrepresented lucrative fields like the sciences because they’re still expected to put their future on hold to raise a couple’s children; where despite Barack Obama’s success black men are more than four times as likely to have felony convictions than white, taking the community’s right to vote away. That means, whether the person saying it is part of the in-group or a well-off member of a minority group, that they have enough, and aren’t interested in helping others get enough. I’d be embarrassed to say something like that.
Sorry I rambled on so much, I am “stealing time” at my job and lost my train of thought a few times as I left and revisited this comment. :)
Totally didn’t do the same thing…
Anyway, I mostly agree with you, just fyi regarding the german green party: Annalena Baerbock was their chancellor candidate, Habeck was effectively what in the US would be a president’s running mate. A duo, but Baerbock was iirc always going to be chancellor if the greens got a majority. And yes, they have joint leadership of the party.
That policy has to do with the german voting system, where each party has to provide a list of candidates for each state. Then according to how many votes the party gets, proportionally many people from that list get into the Bundestag, the list is in order. And that’s the one that had to alternate.
The greens as of last federal election are big enough to where this effectively isn’t going to single out anyone, they will get a few candidates from every state into the Bundestag. However the principle of forcing the gender of slot 1 just left a bit of a bad taste. Still voted for them and will most likely do that again.
Just some extra detail that I think you might have been missing about the German electoral system. #1 spot doesn’t refer to the leader of the party as this comment sort of seems to imply.
Germany uses a voting system called Mixed-Member Proportional. In it, you vote for your local candidate exactly the same as you would in America or the UK—using first past the post. But then you also vote for your favourite party. And there are additional seats in the Bundestag (congress) that are not tied to a particular region, but are instead used to “top up” the total of the Bundestag so that its party representation is proportional to the wishes of the voters. So if 10% of voters want the Greens and 20% want SPD, then 20% of the seats will be SPD and 10% will be Greens. If a party wins more seats in local elections than it is owed proportionally, it gets no additional people. If it wins fewer local elections than its national party vote percentage, it gets topped up using its party list. The #1 spot on that list will be the first person elected under this system, unless they also won their local race, in which case it goes to #2 instead, etc.
MMP is a really good electoral system, and honestly it’s probably the one I would advocate for and would encourage Americans and Brits to advocate for in their respective countries. Though I would replace the party lists entirely with a “nearest loser” to eliminate the problem @[email protected] describes. I’d also prefer IRV be used for the local part of the election, though that might be overly complicating it for some. Having those proportional top-ups means third parties not just can earn a place (which is what IRV by itself does), it actually guarantees that they will earn a place, if any sizeable number of people want them to. No more Nader ruining it for Gore; instead, Nader’s party will actually have representatives elected.
So looking back at the example they described about Germany, if we ignore local seats for the sake of simplicity, if the Greens are owed 1 seat, that seat will always be a woman. If they’re owed 2 seats, they’ll have a woman and a man. Owed 3 seats and they’ll have two women and a man. Etc.
Hope that helps.