In a leaked email sent Monday, one manager at the Democratic National Committee requested colleagues refrain from forwarding a slate of new job opportunities to “cisgender straight white males.”
After listing eight job openings in the DNC’s technology department, Data Services Manager Madeleine Leader wrote, “I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority.” There’s much to be said about this email, which was first reported by the Daily Wire, especially amid the DNC’s desperate efforts to reconfigure after such a poor showing in the Rust Belt last November.
Leader’s attitude is a strong example of how language that might get you an A on a paper at Oberlin can look really silly outside of that bubble. In fact, to most people who evaluate potential coworkers more on the basis of their qualifications than their race, sexual orientation, and gender identity, it probably just sounds discriminatory — which is why, I suspect, it ended up leaking.
Indeed, an anonymous source inside the organization told the Daily Wire, “Clearly, the DNC is doubling down on a failed strategy that has alienated staffers and voters alike. We want to be judged based on the quality of our work, not on identity politics. How can we trust the leadership of the DNC if they don’t even trust us?”
So long as staffers continue to operate from inside their own thick bubble of coastal progressivism, the DNC will struggle mightily to recapture the trust and support of skeptical voters outside urban enclaves — even in a political climate where the Republican president has low approval ratings.
Going forward, the DNC might consider expanding its staff beyond the “Broad City” fanbase. In fact, employees of the committee would probably be better served forwarding those job opportunities along to people who, like most of the country, have never heard the word “cisgender,” because Democrats with different cultural backgrounds actually exist — and they vote, too.
