this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
325 points (96.0% liked)

politics

19107 readers
2720 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 37 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Glad it’s 11, wish it was more.

[–] 0110010001100010@lemmy.world 26 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Same. But that's out of 200 total so 5.5%. As of 2022 a poll concluded that approximately 7.1% of adult Americans identified as LGBT (source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx)

When looking at it that way it's actually a pretty impressive accomplishment. Yes it's not exactly in-line with the population but that would be damn near impossible to do given the various demographics across the entire US.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It shouldn’t be compared to national statistics, but the distribution of the source pool.

In 2021, the NALP Survey of 849 law offices across the country found that 3,653 lawyers (3.7%) identified as LGBTQ.

He’s seated well above the percent of LGBTQ+ attorneys available for him to choose from.

https://www.2civility.org/aba-profile-of-the-legal-profession-heres-what-the-legal-profession-looks-like-in-2022/

[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Being queer doesn't make you worse at law. Preexisting discrimination and discriminatory forces in law world is causing that number to be so much lower than the wider population and the best way to forcefully address that is to increase representation and visibility in that population.

These are elite positions. Everyone on the short lists, queer or not, is qualified for the job. The choices made at that point are not for picking the "best" candidate because there is no "best" candidate. There's different choices. Different viewpoints. Different backgrounds. Different politics.

And I think the Biden administration is making good choices as far as appointments go. Intentional choices. Choices meant to make a culture shift that needs to happen.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I’m 100% sure you’re right. My point wasn’t meant to discredit their candidacy, and I’m sorry if that’s how it read.

I’m simply saying he’s pulling from a pool that is distributed differently than the national distribution, and therefore the pool distribution should be used to reference his selection distribution. It was a comment on statistics, not capabilities.

[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

To be clear, I object to both comparisons-- both to the population-wide demographics and the law-wide one -- though I do clearly think it's a conversation worth having.

Because it fundamentally misunderstands what the purpose of representation is. Representation is not an ends on itself, so "matching" population demographics is useless for anything other than identifying likely discrimination. It's not a numbers game. There's no "but hey, look how close we truly are to achieving good representation!" It's not that, because it's still remarkable that this many queer people have been put into power. They're the exception to prove the rule that the field is still inherently hostile to them.

The goal isn't "equal" or "proportional" representation or anything like that. The goal is elimination of the systemic discrimination. The goal is ensuring that brilliant new minds aren't being filtered out for being different from the social norms. This is back to the old RGB quote.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Oh, I totally agree. It should be much higher if the better candidates are also members of the community. The point of brining statistics into the conversation was to get an idea of his inclusion in relation to the selection group, not that he should be trying to meet some quota.

[–] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago

I think there should be more than a representative number of federal judges who are queer. Queer people are the most at risk from the law, so they should have the biggest say in the law. Same for racial minorities, women, and disabled people.

[–] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Yes. But the overall percentage isn’t there I’m sure. Patience I know. 6 months left to course correct the previous “regime”

[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yet, progressives are contemplating not voting because Biden is "not doing enough." Guess they'd rather see what Trump has in store for them.

load more comments
view more: next ›