Aussie Writer: ‘The Challenge Of Convincing Mediocre White Men They Actually Lack Merit’ (VIDEO)

A new initiative with the wonderful name Can You Not PAC has set out to secure more positions of leadership for women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community.

There are already several organizations on the same mission, but the Can You Not people have a decidedly different take on it: They want to achieve their aims by dissuading heterosexual white men from running for office.

As they state on their home page:

“Can You Not PAC is a political action project that aims to dis/empower and dis/incline people in positions of privilege, specifically straight white men, from ambitions of running for office in progressive urban districts. We challenge brogressives and others to reject any notion that they are uniquely qualified or positioned to seek political office in districts that don’t need them. As well-represented white dudes, we feel it is our obligation to know when to shut up and not.

 “The Can You Not PAC was started by white men, for white men, asking white men that one important question: “Bruh, can you not?” We are happy to host interventions for the misguided bros in your life who looked in the mirror this morning and thought “yeah, it’s gotta be me.”

Their statement goes on to add:

“Maybe you, too, know a handsome upwardly mobile upper-middle class cis dude who is well intentioned and ‘super progressive.’ We’re happy go buy him a locally brewed craft beer and tell him to take a step back instead. We are not the heroes that Gotham needs.”

While it’s jocular in tone, the initiative is clearly serious in its intentions. According to a 2014 Pew Report, the reality is that white, college educated males, are vastly more likely to run for office than anyone else. That’s why more than 75 percent of our political candidates fall into this bracket.

It’s equally clear that the Can You Not PAC have got their work cut out. Focusing for the moment solely on women, Cynthia Terrell, of the FairVote initiative, has estimated that at the current rate of progress, it will take 500 years before they are equally represented at the highest levels of U.S. government office.

Such a shame. Because if history has told us anything, it has told us repeatedly that those white, college educated men, are mediocre, if not dismally bad, at running a country.

Moreover, the notion that if women ran the world it would be a better place is more than just a truism; it’s a fact.

A far-reaching book called  Patterns of Democracy established that countries with more women legislators tend to enact more progressive policies on issues like the environment, support for families, violence prevention, justice, and imprisonment.

It’s not just on social issues where they make a positive difference. Virtually every survey published in the last 15 years, from the United Nations to McKinsey via Credit Suisse, conclusively states that organizations with more women in senior roles outperform their neighbors and bring  better economic results.

Yet the place where it really matters is at the top levels of political representation. And despite isolated exceptions, the likelihood of women even achieving parity – let alone numerical superiority – remains as remote as ever in the U.S.

So let’s raise a glass of home brewed craft beer to the folks at Can You Not PAC. Let’s wish them every success, and let’s hope they have a lot of patience.

Meanwhile here’s a uniquely pithy take on men, from the highest ranking (albeit fictitious) woman so far in U.S. politics.


 
Featured image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.