Progressive Democracy Isn’t

     A principal, at a San Francisco middle school, suspended the results of the student body election because the winner’s “weren’t diverse enough.”  There was no claim of cheating or of the election itself being questionable.  Yet the democratic results were considered illegitimate because the majority of the winners were White, though Whites are only about 20% of the student body.

     Silly persons of color, don’t you know you’re not considered smart enough by Progressives to make your own decisions and elect who you want?

     The principal said “That is concerning to me because as principal I want to make sure the voices are all heard, from all backgrounds”.  Yet weren’t the voices of all students who voted heard on an equal basis?

     Under protest, the Principal relented.  Even then, she declared that it was problematic because she felt that “all voices” weren’t being adequately heard.  This is not surprising.  To Progressives, having an equal say in an election isn’t “democracy” and isn’t being “adequately” heard to the same level as all other students.

     The Progressive vision of Democracy is not one of (Classical) Liberal Democracy.  It is a “democracy” where certain “socially just” normative values are pre-determined before an election, and where individuals do not matter, but only pre-determined groups split along racial and other lines whereof the pre-determined interests of each defined group is represented for the purpose of agreeing to the pre-determined normative values of the Progressive ideology.

     It is just the racial equivalent of “Gender Democracy“:

“It should be noted, however, that the fact that an assessment methodology is informed by a definition of democracy in terms of public control with political equality does not automatically entail that it will be gender-sensitive.  The question here is how the principle of political equality is conceptualised.  Indeed, the assumption that this democratic principle can be realised through formal rights of participation and representation which are equally granted to all the adult population – irrespective of gender – constitutes one of the central feminist criticisms of liberal democracy.

“…

“‘[P]articipatory parity’ in substantive terms, as an ideal of justice requiring social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life.”


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