On inequality and inequitable distributions of power

— Posted inPersonal — 3 min read

This is not an analysis of why Kamala Harris wasn’t elected President.

Except, really it is.

Imagine, for a moment, the US was an equitable meritocratic society.

If there was genuine equality of opportunity for people of all races and genders.

According to the US Census, roughly 14% of Americans are Black, and 50.5% are women: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225223

Around 7% of the US population are Black women.

Conversely, (non-Hispanic) White men make up around 29.2% of the US population,

Now, imagine you were to make a list of the CEOs of America’s 500 largest companies by revenue.

How many would you expect to have a Black CEO?

How many would have a woman as CEO?

How many would have a Black woman as CEO?

If your answer is that around 14% of the 500 CEOs would be Black, then that equates to 70 Black CEOs.

If your answer is that around half of the CEOs would be women, that’s 250 women CEOS.

If your answer is that around 7% would be Black women, that’s 35 Black women CEOs.

And, by that logic, around 29.2% of CEOs would be white men.

Unfortunately, there’s a huge gap between what we’d expect to see in an equitable meritocratic society, and what we actually see in America today.

The total number of Black CEOs in 2024?

It’s eight.

As in, not 8%.

Not 70.

Eight.

That’s not a typo: https://fortune.com/2024/02/09/black-ceos-fortune-500-high-workplace-diversity/

You could comfortably fit them around a 12-seat dining-room table.

And you’d still have empty chairs!

Just 52 out of 500 (that’s 10.4%) are run by women: https://fortune.com/2024/06/04/fortune-500-companies-women-ceos-2024/

Meanwhile, 85.8% of CEOs are White men, and 92.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs are white: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346081966_Diversity_Among_Fortune_500_CEOs_from_2000_to_2020_White_Women_Hi-Tech_South_Asians_and_Economically_Privileged_Multilingual_Immigrants_from_Around_the_World

In a nation where so much power lays in the hands of corporations, this is a massive disparity in power.

It affects which life experiences inform decisions.

It affects the decisions that corporations make, or don’t.

It affects the political candidates corporations support, or don’t.

It affects income distribution. Not just for the CEOs themselves, but in the communities they come from.

Often, discussions about discrimination focus on the beliefs, actions, and words of individuals.

It’s framed as being the moral choices of individuals.

If only the naighty racists and misogynists educate themselves, we’re told, the problems will go away.

This is the comforting, neoliberal analysis of discrimination. The type that fuels social media pile-ons and CNN panel discussions. The type that allows corporations that have never had a female CEO to celebrate International Women’s Day.

But.

The most incidious forms of discrimination relate to power. Who gets to make decisions. Who gets to be CEO and who doesn’t.

The most incidious forms of discrimination are those power structures that protect those who hold power, and hold those power relations in place.

And there’s a world of difference between a politics that focusss on the individual, and the politics that challenges structures of power.

This is not an analysis of why Kamala Harris wasn’t elected President.

Except, really it is.

Melbourne’s car-brained urban planning in the ’60s and ’70s

— Posted inDesign — 2 min read

Q: We have this train station called Huntingdale in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne. It’s served by both the Cranbourne and Pakenham lines. What should we build next to it?

A: A golf course called the Huntingdale Golf Club.

Q: Okay, and what will we build next to that?

A: A golf course called the Metropolitan Golf Club.

Q: But what about this new Monash University that we want to build, where thousands of people will work and study every day?

A: Let’s put that away from the train line, on the far side of Dandenong Rd.

Q: How will people get there?

A: By car or bus.

Q: What about this new Chadstone Shopping Centre, which will be expanded to be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere with a gross leasable area of 237,441 square metres?

A: It also goes on the far side of Dandenong Rd.

Q: How will people get there?

A: By car or bus.

Q: Okay, but what about VFL Park/Waverley Park, the new 70,000 seat stadium we want to upgrade to a capacity of 150,000?

A: Let’s put that even further away from the train, past Springvale Rd.

Q: How will people get there?

A: Slowly. By car.

Q: What about this new suburb of Rowville, which will have a population over 33,000?

A: We’ll build it as single family detached houses even further away from the trains, past Stud Rd.

Q: So you’ll build these places many kilometres from the train line, and a golf course next to the existing train station?

A: Correct.

Q: So how do you expect the golfers get to the golf course?

A: What a silly question! By car, of course!

@fuck_cars

Hello world!

— Posted inBrowser, Personal — 1 min read

Recently, I’ve been thinking about setting up a blog for some of my longer Mastodon posts.

One of the good things about Vivaldi Social, where my Fedi account is based, is that it includes a WordPress blog that includes the Fediverse plugin.

I’m keen to play around with it, just to see how well the integration works.

So for everyone who’s found this post — welcome 😊