[Sosfbay-discuss] Permanent Absentee ballots

[Edward]

I think that we need things like an API etc delegation in the structure of the party because no matter how much "solidarity" we wish to have, the reality is that there are some issues that cannot be realized if we focus only on the whole. I agree that too often, people use ethnic identity as a dividing line rather than a uniting force. For example, the Jena 6 is really about the prevalence of racism in our country and is an opportunity to remind us that even if we don't consider ourselves racist, there are small things that we do (or don't do) that reflect the racism in all of us and being aware of it is the first step towards change. However, even on the Berkeley campus, the Jena 6 incident has been used to reflect racism against only African-Americans in our country.

Maybe the reason that ethnicity often divides is the mentality embedded in a "caucus." The American Heritage Dictionary defines a caucus as "a group within a legislative or decision-making body seeking to represent a specific interest or influence a particular area of policy." If African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian/Pacific Islander-Americans, Native Americans, etc. are all pursuing their own interests, progress will be very slow. However, if the mentality was that of something like a council in which an assembly of persons gather together for consultation, deliberation, or discussion, we can develop broader policies that benefit more people.

For example (and this is just a random issue and not intended to reflect the actual views of the various ethnic groups), let's say that the API community feel that they are significantly underrepresented in the media. The African-American community may feel that they have equal representation, but they are always portrayed in stereotypical roles. If each caucus pursues its own goal, the outcome could be that APIs get more representation in the media, but always as the role of a karate expert, nerd, or housekeeper while African-Americans will diversify their roles but have less representation. In the end, both achieve their goals, but face new ones to overcome. Had they worked together to achieve equal representation and non-stereotypical roles to begin with, both groups could be better off. Furthermore, had there been no API or African-American community representation at all, the issue might not have even been noticed.

Obviously this is a very simplistic example to a quite complicated and institutional problem, but it hopefully illustrates my point of "caucus vs. no caucus" and "caucus vs. council."

I have no idea what this has to do with Permanent Absentee ballots, but this is what I think about the discussion about the "People of Color" caucus.

       
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