our division has been engineered; what do we do about it?

posted on Jan 31, 2025

danny caballero

I am going to start this post with some massive caveats. I am not an expert in political science; I’m not a communications expert; I’m not a historian. Frankly, I’m barely a physicist. 😂

But, I have worked to build programs and to institutionalize changes in my department and at my university. And contrary to what the general public might understand about a university, we are a large and diverse organization; we are resistant to change; and we don’t embrace new ways of doing things easily or quickly – even when we know it’s the right thing to do or we have the data to support it.

My work has helped me learn how big organizations work, how they actively and passively resist change, how power is distributed in the organization, and what it takes to make things move. And one core lesson is that division is a powerful tool for maintaining the status quo. Community is the remedy.

I have also observed members of my family and some of my friends join and advocate for a political movement that pushes for our division in every statement and action. This movement is actively hostile to the principles of the American experiment - a diverse society that acknowledges the harms and shortcomings of our past and works across our differences to build a better future. We have not done this hard work at every point in space or time, but the trend is clear - we have moved towards a more just, equitable, and inclusive American society.

If you are reading this, you likely know me personally. You know or can infer my politics. If you don’t, let me be clear about them.

Community is key to building a more just, equitable, and inclusive society. This is not just here at home, but also in our interactions with the rest of the world. The challenges we face - climate change, economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and more - are global challenges. We need to work together to solve them. We also need to recognize that we don’t all see the importance and urgency of these challenges, in part, because it serves the wealthiest and most powerful among us to keep us divided, but also because people have lives with the many challenges and responsibilities that come with it.

dei as a core value of american democracy

I listened again to an episode from Stacey Abrams’s Assembly Required. The episode is worth a listen.

In it, there are two core lessons that resonated with me: DEI is our history, and community is necessary for our future.

dei is the history of america

DEI is a deep part of our history as Americans. At every turn, people have fought for the right to be included. There are many examples from the history. In 1790, the Naturalization Act limited citizenship to “free white persons of good character” - translation: white, Christian, male landowners. Interestingly, power was deeply nested with capital and property ensuring that only the wealthy could chart the course for our nation.

In some Northern states, free black men and women began to gain the right to vote, but in some cases voting rights remained limited to those with property and in others, those same voting rights were later rescinded. The principal early expansion of voting rights was to all white men, with no property requirements, which coincided with election of Andrew Jackson in 1828.

As a reminder, President Jackson is the asshole who forced Indigenous Americans to be removed from their lands. Fuck that guy.

By 1856, we had abolished property requirements for voting in all states.

After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship “to all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included the formerly enslaved. In 1870, we adopted the Fifteenth Amendment, which stopped state and federal governments from denying a citizen the right on the basis “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

In a quick reaction to this, many states adopted Jim Crow laws that actively discriminated and disenfranchised Black (and we often forget, Brown) Americans. The wealthy and White establishment in these states could not have their large Black and Brown populations selecting leaders who represented them. Poll taxes and literacy tests were used frequently and applied unequally as White Americans were typically exempted from these requirements through their access to education and wealth. These lawmakers used division to ensure poor and working class whites saw “otherness” in their Black and Brown neighbors rather than a similar struggle against the wealthy White elites. Many Black and Brown folks were terrorized, murdered, and lynched throughout this period.

Below is a photo of a literacy test used Louisiana in 1964. Can you answer all of these questions?

Louisiana voting test: How many questions can you answer? Source: Slate

Interestingly, while we continued to disenfranchise Black and Brown Americans, we expanded voting rights to include women in 1920, Native Americans in 1924, Chinese Americans in 1943. We allowed DC residents to vote for president in 1961.

Finally, through an incredible effort over nearly two centuries, we passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which prohibits the discrimination “based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.” We then quickly passed Voting Rights Act in 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. The passing of these laws followed countless marches, protests, and other acts of courage, as well as a long history of abuse, bloodshed, and court battles.

These pieces of legislation are some of the most important in our history. They are the culmination of a long struggle to expand our democracy to include all Americans through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

a personal story

My grandfather was a lifelong voter and remained deeply informed about the political climate throughout his life. He experienced the segregated South as a dark-skinned man of Indigenous Mexican and White Spanish heritage. My grandfather grew up when “Mexicans” were separated from Whites in public spaces.

Sign from Texas excluding Mexicans from service. Source: NBC News

My grandfather married my grandmother who is a light-skinned, light-haired woman of Spanish and Mexican heritage. They experienced racism and colorism throughout their lives. They lived through the Civil Rights Movement and passing of the Voting Rights Act.

I recall a story that my grandmother told me about my dad who is as dark as my grandfather. When my dad was in elementary school, he was teased for his dark skin. He came home and asked that his dad, my grandfather, not come to school because he was “too dark” and the kids teased my dad. This was in the mid 1960s.

That story reminds me of both how far we had come in the lifetime of my grandfather and that we still have a lot of work to do.

building community is necessary for our future

We must build back our communities, rebuild and repair our relationships, and develop the trust we need in each other. To solve the challenges we face, we must work together.

To build these communities, we need to embrace our differences, recognize that we all have barriers to our full engagement and participation, and work to ensure that everyone can feel that they belong. Stacy’s guest on her podcast, Kenji Yoshino, reframes how we have to think about DEI in these ways.

Every single one of us experiences some form of marginalization. We all experience barriers to our full participation in our communities and society. Someone else’s barriers might seem like a small thing to you, but to the person experiencing them, those barriers might be the only thing they can think about.

I also don’t only mean for us to think about DEI in terms of those who are the most vulnerable: women, folks of color, people in our queer and transgender communities, military veterans, those who live paycheck to paycheck, our disabled family and friends, folks in rural and urban communities, and our unhoused neighbors. But also we need to think about those we (and I include myself) have typically excluded from DEI: White Americans, our Asian communities, Christians, and straight cis-gendered folks.

We all have things that make us feel like we don’t belong. My nonbinary and trans friends experience daily threats of violence and the erasure of their full self. My Black and Brown family and friends are often reminded of their “otherness” through microaggressions and outright racism. Most of my doctoral students identify as women, queer, and/or non-binary; these brilliant people experience the vitriol of a toxic STEM culture on a daily basis.

Lastly, many folks, including most of my family, work paycheck-to-paycheck. A lot of Americans are only one emergency away from financial ruin; more than 50% of Americans cannot afford a $400 bill. That is the reality for many folks including my White, cis-gendered, straight family and friends. Of course, folks might feel combinations of these (and other) barriers at different times in their lives. These barriers are real and they affect us all. Kenji argues that we need to focus on removing barriers for everyone, leveling the playing field of opportunity, and addressing belonging.

To me, this is a call build community. It’s a call for conversation, for listening, and for action. It’s a call to recognize that we are all in this together, and that despite the respite in the American experiment, we have overcome so much in our history and we can do it again.

clearing the air

As I said at the beginning, I am not an expert in history, political science, or DEI. I’m simply a person who has the privilege, and can make the time to think about these things. That is not a privilege afforded to many of my family and friends. I understand that. I am also someone who thinks by writing; so apologies for the word vomit.

I have family who experienced incredible exclusion and discrimination. I have personal experience with racism and marginalization. I have experienced the authoritarian and fascistic behavior of law enforcement that is common for Black and Brown Americans, the poor and unhoused, and my trans loved ones.

I have also been a part of the problem. I have acted in sexist, racist, and transphobic ways. I have said and done things that have hurt others - sometimes with sexist, racist, and transphobic language, and in some of those instances, with intent. I have been sexist, racist, and transphobic.

It takes work to unlearn these things. I am still working on it every day.

what can we do?

At the top, I said that our division has been engineered. Our history is one of overcoming division. Those divisions were created by those in power to maintain their power. Enslaved Africans and other non-White Americans were seen as a threat to the established White and Christian power structure. As we have expanded our democracy, we have had to bridge across these divisions through community building. Those communities must be diverse. They must be well-informed. And they must help us see how we have been divided.

what is happening?

Ok, put on your tinfoil hat for a moment.

Ok. Perfect. Let's continue.

This does not start in 2010, but I will start there for brevity.

Our division is a means to an end. The powerful and wealthy advocated strongly for flooding our elections with private money. The rules are such that it is incredible difficult to determine who funds these campaigns. Well before this, the wealthy and President Ronald Reagan pushed to remove the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 (obligatory, fuck that guy), which required broadcasters to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was honest, equitable, and balanced. This allowed for the development of siloed media outlets that cater to a specific political ideology.

This is not new. Yellow journalism has been around for a long time. The difference now is that we have a lot more outlets that are producing content 24 hours a day and they are much more targeted.

But why is the news on 24 hours a day? Because we watch it. Because advertisers pay for it. Because it’s not about informing you, it’s about keeping your eyes on the screen.

Our media consumption is a commodity; why does Netflix keep putting out movies and shows that are terrible? Because they want to keep you on the platform. They want to keep you watching, so you continue to pay for the service. Here’s a great source tracing the enshittification of Netflix from Paris Marx.

You might think I’m blaming Republicans for this, but I’m not. This is a bipartisan problem. Some Democrats have lost their way on this; particuarly the older and more established ones who have reaped the benefits of this unfair and inequitable system.

Want a good stock tip? Invest in the same companies that Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell do.

The division is a tool to keep us siloed and distracted. It is not that division was engineering for the sake of division, but rather it was an effective tool to maintain power and wealth. We have all been played against each other by wealthy leaders in both parties, tech oligarchs, and the media that is driven by selling us more things that we don’t need.

And what this whole effort has done is make us distrust each other - to view family and friends as enemies and to see those who are different from us as threats. We focus on the differences between us rather than the things that we have in common, and we continue to be bilked for our money, our time, and our attention.

what can we do about it?

If you are still reading, thanks? I know this is a lot.

We have to build community. We have to work across our differences. We have to recognize that we are all in this together. We have to understand that we are all being played by the same people - the wealthy and powerful who use their money to get what they want and leave us fighting over the scraps.

What we can do will look different for each of us. I hope this post inspires you to think about what you can do. Here’s what I’m going to do.

I am going to double down on my efforts to build community in my departments and at my university. This is not just about DEI; it’s a form of radical inclusion. It’s about building trust and relationships across programs and departments as well as across students, staff, and faculty. It’s about focusing on the challenges we all face and breaking down the barriers that keep us from working together. It’s about recognizing that we need each other to succeed.

For my friends and family, it means I will show up for you. I will work to listen better. I will try hard to hear you. I will ask questions, and I will try to understand.

I will not get angry when you say something that I don’t agree with. I will try instead to ask you why you think that and to explain what is keeping you from being a part of the larger solution. I will try to understand what barriers you face and I will work with you to remove them.

And yes, this means I will ask you uncomfortable questions and I will ask you to be vulnerable with me. Because that is what community is. It’s about being there for each other, even when it’s hard.

How all of this translates to action is not clear yet. I know that some of us want immediate action, but it’s not obvious where we go because we must talk to each other. We must listen to each other. We must understand each other. We should remind ourselves it took us 250 years to get here.

We have a lot of work to do.