One of the most appealing aspects of deliberative democracy is its normative underpinnings, which treat people as moral and political equals. From this starting point, deliberative democrats emphasize mutual justification, grounding the design and implementation of deliberative processes here to uphold deliberative democratic legitimacy. Over the decades, the scope of deliberative democracy and its criteria have evolved, most notably with the recent turn to deliberative systems, which take an expansive and substantive view of who and what counts, laying groundwork for manifestations of deliberative democracy that take deliberative democracy's democratic contributions more seriously (Parkinson, Reference Parkinson, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 441). There is much to value here. Developments in the inclusive capacity of deliberative democracy, however, belie the theory's normative emphasis on moral and political equality. Deliberative democracy unfolds against the backdrop of the real world: one built on foundational inequality and characterized by structural and systemic racism. Deliberative democratic processes and theorists aim for greater inclusion, but inclusion into deeply unjust and unequal systems will not lead to the moral and political equality necessary to meet deliberative democracy's normative foundational requirements. Deliberative theorists need to provide analytic clarity on the structural nature of the problem. Failures in deliberative systems are not due to insufficient inclusion. Rather, relying on an inclusion framework in the pursuit of treating all people as moral and political equals ultimately occurs to the detriment of addressing—and dismantling—deeper systemic racism.
The way we understand the problem matters. What is otherwise set out as urgency in important calls to critique “the uneven distribution of voice in the public sphere” and to evaluate it as “one of the clearest manifestations of illegitimate power in practice” (Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 65) loses its force without an explicit discussion of white supremacy. Taking up this necessary recommendation, deliberative democratic theorists need to name systemic racism as a pervasive, structural and deliberate erasure of racialized people's power. Calls to ensure public spheres are truly inclusive and offer space for marginalized people to affect the deliberative system (Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 44) are important, but moving these beyond the limits of the inclusion framework requires attention to the deliberative literature's general absence of the word racist: a silence reinforcing the white supremacy underpinning deliberative systems. Building on arguments that deliberative democrats must expand their scope and analysis to combat entrenched exclusions (Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019), I contend that the deliberative literature needs not only to re-engage the public sphere but, as Banerjee notes, to pay attention to “colonial relations of power between different groups” (Reference Banerjee2021: 11) rather than deepening our processes in different contexts.
I examine the ways inclusion into systems is incompatible with genuine equality and the normative underpinnings of deliberative democracy and show how an inclusion framework stops us from taking responsibility for structural and systemic racism. I argue that if we want deliberative systems to meaningfully pursue core deliberative democratic principles, we need to reframe power to centre the relationship between race and democracy. I then propose ways to begin dismantling foundational injustice in deliberative systems. These include ways to centre foundational inequalities as we develop deliberative theory and evaluate deliberative processes, as well as an overview of differential responsibilities for listening as deliberative theorists take the problem of white supremacy in deliberative systems seriously.
Foundational Requirements and Structural Failures
The foundational inequality characterizing the normative failures in deliberative democracy is not unique to deliberative democratic theory: it is pervasive throughout democratic theory and practice more broadly. Deliberative theorists, however, lay foundational claims to moral and political equality; as a result, we have a specific obligation to expose, and work against, the conditions that inherently prevent it. Take, for instance, mutual respect: a long-standing foundational requirement necessary to engage in fair and equal deliberative processes. In conjunction with mutual justification, it aims to let deliberants collectively reach a position all can accept (Benhabib, Reference Benhabib1996; Bohman and Rehg, Reference Bohman and Rehg1997; Gutmann and Thompson, Reference Gutmann and Thompson1996), resisting distortions by coercive power and focusing on “the equal opportunity to influence” (Bächtiger et al., Reference Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, Warren, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 6) while treating all people as equals. Here, a core requirement is “to respect the other as a source of reasons, claims, and perspectives” (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 11).
The problem lies in how we interpret what is necessary for meaningful consideration and respect. While the deliberative literature has seen many excellent developments improving the substantive presence of racialized people in deliberative systems (Afsahi, Reference Afsahi2020; Beauvais, Reference Beauvais, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018; Johnson, Reference Johnson2008, Reference Johnson2015; Smith, Reference Smith2013), there are inherent limits in thinking through the increased engagement of, and with, racialized people when it occurs against backgrounds of structural injustice where racialized people are systematically devalued and dismissed (Cottom, Reference Cottom2019; Maynard, Reference Maynard2017; Taylor, Reference Taylor2019). This background context is one of white supremacy: a political system of power “by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people” (Mills, Reference Mills1997: 1–2). White supremacy is evident in race- and sex-based pay gaps (Gould, Reference Gould2019), overwhelming differences in income and median wealth (Maynard, Reference Maynard2017: 73; Olson, Reference Olson2004: 74), property ownership and housing security, rates of unemployment (Taylor, Reference Taylor2016: 11; Reference Taylor2019), the precarious nature of jobs (Maynard, Reference Maynard2017: 71), the disproportionate exclusion of racialized people from positions of power and the constraints placed upon those with key positions of power, and the overrepresentation of racialized people in poverty and carceral systems (Alexander, Reference Alexander2012; Cole, Reference Cole2020; Maynard, Reference Maynard2017; Taylor, Reference Taylor2019). Understandings of what constitutes meaningful consideration and respect are a product of racial aphasia: “our collective inability to speak about race” (Thompson, Reference Thompson2013: 135). In Canada, the reality of deep structural racism coexists with claims to have left racism behind (Kobayashi and Johnson, Reference Kobayashi, Johnson, Johnson and Enomoto2007: 5): a wilful denial of our racist reality supported by the dearth of data collection (Kobayashi and Johnson, Reference Kobayashi, Johnson, Johnson and Enomoto2007: 6; Thompson, Reference Thompson2008, Reference Thompson2016). This context embodies our failure to examine the political production of race (Thompson, Reference Thompson2008: 535), while it anchors “claims to formal and substantive equality . . . [in] systems of racial classification” (Thompson, Reference Thompson2015: 115) that we “simultaneously hide and enshrine” (Thompson, Reference Thompson2008: 542).
Our failure to acknowledge foundational background conditions of racist injustice and inequality (Hooker, Reference Hooker2009, Reference Hooker2016; Mills, Reference Mills1997, Reference Mills2015; Olson, Reference Olson2004) underpins evaluations of meaningful consideration and denies the mutual respect deliberative democracy requires. Moving beyond this reality requires explicit and sustained work to dismantle racist structures. Instead, deliberative theory points to differences in interpretation over what it means to secure mutual respect (Bächtiger et al., Reference Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, Warren, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 4–6; Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 11) without acknowledging these exist alongside systemic racism in ways that are significantly informed by it.
A central premise of democratic theory is that democracy is a collective effort where all people should at least sometimes expect to lose as a cost of procedural fairness. In a context of deep and systemic racism, however, we bend and accept this premise at the cost of moral and political equality. In a much-needed critique, Hooker (Reference Hooker2016: 449) notes this foundational contradiction as she argues that systemic racism creates an “absence of reciprocity,” negating the equal distribution of democratic sacrifice. The reality, built into the democratic foundation, is that “in the context of white supremacy . . . the burden of democratic sacrifice is unequally distributed” (Hooker, Reference Hooker2009: 48). Hooker's critical emphasis on the “absence of reciprocity” is particularly relevant for deliberative democracy, which takes reciprocity and the premise that all people are moral equals as a core criterion (Gutmann and Thompson, Reference Gutmann and Thompson1996). The structural reasons for deliberative systems’ ongoing inability to achieve meaningful reciprocity in the context of white supremacy ought to be a wake-up call for the ways the deliberative literature talks about power and fails to talk about structural racism.
Fundamental limitations are also evident in the ways that those with structural (white) privilege represent the increasing presence of racialized people within institutions and systems of power as proof that inclusion is working and that the “arc of the moral universe” does bend “toward justice” (King, Reference King1968). The deliberative literature embraces a narrative of racial progress evident in expectations for “large parts of a deliberative system to converge over time to accept good reasons”; in this context, the literature celebrates “the widespread societal conclusion that discrimination in hiring by race and gender is unjust” (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 8). The hope is that we are on the right path, one that deliberative systems advance. The reality is that racism persists alongside claims that we are moving toward greater racial justice—claims that ring hollow as racist disparities continue to grow (Taylor, Reference Taylor2019: xvii). As systemic racism evolves and transforms, we can track the deepening of racial inequality and injustice on many metrics (Kobayashi and Johnson, Reference Kobayashi, Johnson, Johnson and Enomoto2007: 4; Mills, Reference Mills2015; Taylor, Reference Taylor2019).
When the greater inclusion we point to occurs within racist systems, developments are always, inherently, constrained. On the serious, and racist, limits of inclusion, Taylor notes the extreme visibility and influence of Black women's positions of power and influence and the ways they “are held up as examples” of systems that are “just and democratic” (Reference Taylor2017: 9–10). Taylor juxtaposes dominant narratives with the far more pervasive reality of intersecting structures of oppression. Here, Taylor underscores the deep failures of democratic claims of progress and a collective (white) abdication of justice in metrics of success (Reference Taylor2017: 10). Deep and ongoing racism needs acknowledging and its structural underpinnings need understanding before it can be dismantled (Kobayashi and Johnson, Reference Kobayashi, Johnson, Johnson and Enomoto2007; Thompson, Reference Thompson2008, Reference Thompson2017): anyone, or any theory, prioritizing equality needs to begin by recognizing our existing structures are the problem and that this precludes inclusion into them as an effective response.
Structural Limits on Deliberative Power
In order to understand the limits of deliberative democracy's inclusion framework, we need to look at how the deliberative literature talks about race. In this section, I note the failure to address white supremacy and privilege and the ways structural racism underpins, and is ignored by, the background systems against which deliberative democracy unfolds. I then highlight ways the deliberative literature misses this foundational erasure in its critical investigation of power and also perpetuates it with a focus on inclusion; I then discuss the impact of these failures on foundational deliberative principles of equality.
Devaluation of racialized people is, by design, something people with white privilege are not meant to see or respond to in meaningful ways. White supremacy is not only the absence of barriers but also the benefits of whiteness that exist on the other side of—and because of—these barriers (Taylor, Reference Taylor2019: xvi). These benefits underpin narratives of merit and feed into judgments of those who “deserve” their social and economic status and the “undeserving” racialized people devalued as a result (Cottom, Reference Cottom2019: 22; Taylor, Reference Taylor2019). This happens “through language that is often subtle and indirect but always reasonable within the terms of reference of democratic society and, therefore, not readily acknowledged as racist” (Kobayashi and Johnson, Reference Kobayashi, Johnson, Johnson and Enomoto2007: 8). White supremacist narratives are pervasive and deliberately aim to separate democratic processes and principles from the foundations of racism (Olson, Reference Olson2004: xii, xxiii). Racial injustice, as it rests on white supremacy, underpins everything deliberative democracy addresses, yet it does so without the literature explicitly acknowledging and engaging with it (Hesse, Reference Hesse2017: 591). When the focus is on inclusion rather than systemic injustice, diversity rather than racism, disadvantage rather than privilege, the literature erases whiteness as a political production (Thompson, Reference Thompson2008, Reference Thompson2017: 461; Olson, Reference Olson2004) and does so while enabling its effects. This is, of course, not exclusive to deliberative democracy, but these structurally unjust effects are particularly notable as they stand in opposition to its stated normative aim of deepening deliberative democratic equality by treating all people as moral and political equals.
Despite important calls to pursue “democratic norms of inclusion and equality” (Bächtiger and Parkinson, Reference Bächtiger and Parkinson2019: 13) and a much-needed analysis of deliberative democracy's legacy as it “is embattled with its relationship with questionable forms of power” (Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: v), the literature's analysis of power does not extend to foundational racist challenges. As a result, inclusion in deliberative systems faces inherent constraints. Even when analysis is on “the ambivalent relationship between deliberative democracy and power” and the need to confront it in the systems context with an emphasis on marginalized people, the argument is that deliberative democracy can confront coercive forms of power (Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: v–vi; see also Bächtiger and Parkinson, Reference Bächtiger and Parkinson2019). These discussions—as important as they are—take place without explicitly confronting the connection between race and power and fail to examine race as a political production (Thompson, Reference Thompson2008). The inequality inherent in structural racism persists due to a broader conception of democracy that both assumes and ignores white supremacy (Hooker, Reference Hooker2009, Reference Hooker2016; Mills, Reference Mills1997, Reference Mills2015; Olson, Reference Olson2004).
The deliberative literature clearly recognizes that racism is antithetical to deliberative democracy: the problem is in the lack of systemic analysis of racism and its pervasive effects. When it does address racism and sexism, it seldom uses the words themselves. Instead, discussions are of pluralism or “multicultural challenges” and emphasize the need to remedy “inequalities of political, economic, and cultural power” (Bächtiger et al., Reference Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, Warren, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 3; Deveaux, Reference Deveaux, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 156–70; Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 53; Fung, Reference Fung2004). The problem is that multiculturalism and anti-racism efforts are not the same.
Deliberative democracy's attention to deepening inclusion started early, in response to the exclusion of marginalized people via restrictive norms of reason-giving (Sanders, Reference Sanders1997; Young, Reference Young and Benhabib1996). Now, with a renewed focus on power, attention is on the problem of “liberal, Western, masculine traditions” (Curato et al., Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 37): a significant step forward. As Curato et al. turn to “feminist and cultural critiques,” they discuss the substantial body of work that deepens inclusion, arguing that “deliberative theory has been a dynamic normative project . . . reflexive enough to evaluate and even adjust its normative assumptions based on criticisms” (Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 37). The takeaway is that if the deliberative literature re-evaluates power, it can continue to deepen inclusion in meaningful ways. Absent from the discussion is any mention of white supremacy, white privilege or colonialism. The relatively neutral “masculine” and the descriptor “feminist critiques” take the place of naming structural sexism. Similarly, the use of “cultural critiques” does not refer specifically to systemic racism. Of course, this catch-all term can encompass this—which is likely the intent—but without naming them, deliberative democracy continues to circumvent white supremacy's structural challenges. Describing the inequalities marginalized people experience as ones that map onto culture implicitly presents culture as something that is other: while marginalized people are othered by dominant framings, this is a different objection. Identifying marginalized people in terms of culture includes a tacit assumption that those who dominate somehow escape culture as a descriptor (Gaucher, Reference Gaucher2016; Thompson, Reference Thompson2008). This idea is a product of white supremacy. It not only reinforces racist assumptions about who belongs but also depoliticizes much of our analysis and “frame(s) racial oppression as a cultural conflict rather than a problem of power” (Olson, Reference Olson2004: xxiii). Critical investigation of cultural imperialism falls by the wayside, replaced by talk of how we might redistribute power within the system (Gaucher, Reference Gaucher2016: 530; Young, Reference Young1990: 58–61), using a framework of inclusion, rather than challenge it on a foundational level.
In another important re-examination of power, Fung (Reference Fung2005) investigates the significant tension between the egalitarian conditions necessary for deliberative democracy and the reality of background inequities. Here, he asks what responsibilities deliberative democrats have, setting out a theory of “deliberative activism,” along with several “principles to guide deliberative action under unfavourable circumstances” (398, 402). Key to this, he notes, is avoiding a response that either gives up on deliberative democracy because it has no relevance in the real world or is unable to offer meaningful guidance on bringing existing circumstances closer to deliberative democracy's normative ideals (400). This line of investigation shares a core concern with my critique: if we believe in the normative value of fair and equal deliberation, then we must find a way to deliberate in the face of unjust conditions. I diverge from Fung, however, on the source of the problem. Fung identifies “economic inequality, cultural difference” and a (general) “absence of a reciprocal willingness to engage in the practice of deliberation” as the main obstacles (401). The problem I address is not “unfavourable circumstances” (402) but the structural injustices intentionally designed to view people as morally and politically unequal. The deliberate and insidious nature of systemic and institutional racism is a problem that Fung's proposed solution—and his characterization of the problem—does not contend with.
Fung's deliberative activism preceded the deliberative systems literature, building on Young's (Reference Young2000) important critique of the challenging relationship between activism and deliberative democracy. It has significant value for emphasizing activism's positive impact and the ways that improving background conditions enriches the application of deliberative principles. However, a two-part problem remains. First are the ways that activists, as they overwhelmingly aim to combat structural injustice, are devalued and dismissed on a structural level (Drake, Reference Drake2021). When we combine this with a reliance on increased inclusion into existing, structurally unjust systems, albeit with the aim of improving them, we cannot make the necessary structural changes. The second, related problem lies in Fung's “middle-level account of deliberative activism” that avoids the “two extremes” of abandoning deliberative democracy's normative principles and failing to provide real-world guidance (Reference Fung2005: 400). The problem lies in what deliberative democratic theorists are, perhaps unintentionally, willing to accept in this middle-ground, inclusion-focused framing. Take, for example, his principle of fidelity. Here, Fung notes that because no procedure can be “perfectly just in its implementation or results . . . fidelity means the deliberative activist believes that many shortcomings of actual deliberations will be outweighed by their other benefits” (402). Presented as a guiding principle, however, this statement embodies the problem. Deliberative democracy's insistence on its ability to foster fair, equal and inclusive deliberation persists alongside deep structural injustice: conditions that belie the ability of deliberants to do this. Acknowledgments of real-world limitations do not let deliberative theorists dodge this problem. Indeed, it is the insistence that things are “flawed but improvable” (403) within a fundamentally flawed system—without sustained focus on dismantling the system itself—that is the problem. “Institutional rupture,” which Fung expressly notes the deliberative activist does not aim for (403), is the only way to dismantle the foundational injustice of white supremacy.
Fung's contributions are important, but they fit squarely within an inclusion framework. Indeed, Fung's stated goal is to dampen the effects of background inequalities (Reference Fung2004: 24) and to examine ways that institutions “can become more responsive, fair, and effective by incorporating empowered participation into their governance structures” (4; emphasis added). While Fung sets out many important contributions and significant proposals for practical institutional reforms, his analysis does not take on systemic injustices and the accompanying devaluation of people that fundamentally undermines the ability for equal participation.
The deliberative literature's re-examination of power includes discussion of structural injustice via oppression. This presents an opportunity to examine deeper systemic problems, yet this is undercut by a focus on extending inclusion. In an important, and rare, discussion of oppression in deliberative democracy, Beauvais (Reference Beauvais, Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren2018: 144–45) looks at what equality really entails, noting two values: universal moral equality and equity; both, she argues, are necessary to achieve substantive inclusion in deliberative democracy. Beauvais notes that equity “requires the demands of justice to attend to social circumstances, and recognizes systemic differences (such as structural inequalities)”; she argues that “failure to address remaining inequalities contributes to ongoing powerlessness and marginalization of members of historically disempowered social groups,” yet the inclusion-based focus of illustrative examples negates a deeper structural analysis (145–46). For instance, when Beauvais discusses the literature's pursuit of inclusion in the media, she notes the importance of key rights and freedoms and the need for institutional reform, regulation and support, as well as the necessity of open and pluralistic public communication (147). While we can, and should, pursue this, there is no discussion of the pervasiveness of racism, sexism and colonialism in media coverage, despite its centrality to understanding foundational systems of oppression and the fact that racist and sexist media affect all aspects of democratic systems. Newsrooms are overwhelmingly white and male (Grieco, Reference Grieco2018; McLean, Reference McLean2018). The relative lack of Black reporters affects coverage, with substantial overrepresentations of Black people in stories on crime and poverty (Jan, Reference Jan2017) and widespread construction and perpetuation of racist stereotypes (Dixon et al., Reference Dixon, Weeks and Smith2019). These inequalities and the corresponding “larger failure . . . to validate and trust the black experience” (Lowery, Reference Lowery2016: 154) extend to all aspects of deliberative systems. They are also a substantial form of “undue influence” of the type central to Mansbridge et al.'s (Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 23) critique of the media, which emphasizes the way domination in any one component leads to the failure of the broader deliberative system. While important, this argument also misses an opportunity to analyze structural racism. Critiques that fail to make systemic issues a central focus will never be enough to demolish barriers to equal participation or take the relationship between race and power seriously. If we want deliberative systems to succeed, we need to recognize that the deeper problem is the perpetuation of white supremacy and its fundamental incompatibility with normative deliberative democratic principles.
The problem of erasing systemic racism in analyses of power is widespread. In Mansbridge et. al's Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012 analysis of five “defects in the deliberative system” (22–24)—in a book referred to as “a manifesto for the systemic turn” (Owen and Smith, Reference Owen and Smith2015: 213) and co-written by eight prominent deliberative democratic theorists—there is a notable absence of discussion of racism and systemic oppression. This is despite the focus on system-wide barriers to marginalized people's participation. As Mansbridge et al. investigate the challenge of a dominant mindset that resists meaningful democratic deliberation, their example condemns instances “when some public issue is driven by nationalism or xenophobia and those sentiments begin to drive individuals who inhabit all of the locations in a deliberative system” (23). This initially holds considerable promise: focusing on the stubborn impermeability of public sentiment might help us critique a range of exclusions and foundational injustice, from anti-immigration views to systemic racism. However, the limits of their critique appear not only in the examples they do (and don't) provide but in their framing of the problem. Their example is the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War: a deep injustice clearly illustrating the pervasiveness of nationalism and xenophobia and their harmful, anti-democratic effects. However, it is also an example that roots injustice in the past. Saying “what we now believe to be the force of the better argument did not prevail because that argument could find no institutional point of purchase in the deliberative system of that time and place” (23), Mansbridge et al. are correct, but this explanation fails to name racism. The majority of those interred were US citizens (Shaffer, Reference Shaffer1999: 600). The focus on nationalism and xenophobia frames a “them” as external, with Japanese-Americans from other countries and of other nations; this is significant, as it fails to look inward to the racism happening within America to American citizens. The “Americans” component of Japanese-Americans falls from view and allows us to downplay the explicitly racist motivations of a policy that “both developed from and fanned anti-Japanese racism in [the] country” (Shaffer, Reference Shaffer1999: 597). It also misses an opportunity to call out ongoing systemic racism as “the problem of group-think writ large, at institutional scale” (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 22–23): a foundational harm that produces system-wide failures resistant to inclusion-focused redress.
The relative invisibility of racism in deliberative democratic literature is a systemic problem. White supremacy itself is a form of “tight coupling”: the reason for Mansbridge et al.'s (Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 23) comments on nationalism and xenophobia. Seventy-five years later, white supremacy and systemic racism continue to underpin fundamentally unequal power relations. That we could identify racism in this example and connect it to denunciations of xenophobia and nationalism is not the point; the point is that failures to do so pervade the deliberative literature and underscore white supremacist understandings of deliberative democratic legitimacy that are incompatible with its normative foundations.
Reframing Power: Centring Race and Democracy
The deliberative literature needs a re-examination of power, one centring the racist structural injustice underpinning a deeply unequal democratic foundation. Without this, any efforts to enhance inclusion—well meaning as they may be—will fail to address the root of the problem. In this section, I examine foundational barriers to equality that fundamentally impact power in deliberative democracy but which the theory does not address. I then identify key ways to reframe deliberative systems.
Fundamentally, the ability to engage in democratic activities is profoundly different depending upon which side of whiteness a person finds themself. Central to critiques of asymmetrical (Hooker, Reference Hooker2016) or white (Olson, Reference Olson2004) democracy is the argument that dominant efforts to reduce power inequalities are inherently limited by their refusal to interrogate “the idea of whiteness as a paradigmatic relation of power or domination” or recognize it “as an ultimate source of political authority” (Hesse, Reference Hesse2017: 591). The deliberative literature, avoiding engagement with whiteness and white supremacy, frames problems of structural racism as illegitimate exclusions on the basis of race. This framing turns what are actually foundational problems of whiteness into inclusion-centred problems in which race is one of many areas that deliberative systems need to improve upon. This framing ignores the foundational nature of the problem and is a major obstacle to deliberative democracy's normative project.
Deliberative democracy needs to investigate race as a political category (Olson, Reference Olson2004: xvi; Thompson, Reference Thompson2008). Olson notes that, as a discipline, political science “has generally treated race as something created prior to or outside the political realm” (Reference Olson2004: xii)—a problem that we know is acute in Canadian political science (Thompson, Reference Thompson2008). As he develops this critique, Olson notes that a “‘pre-political’ conception of race separates racial inequality out from democratic ideals, which makes it difficult to recognize the ways race and democracy are interconnected” (Reference Olson2004: xii). The inability (or refusal) to examine how race informs democracy ignores that race functions “as a set of relations within a network of power,” which intentionally reduces political participation on the basis of race (Olson, Reference Olson2004: xii, xx). This devaluation by design means that inclusion-focused strategies will coexist with ongoing foundational inequalities.
What does this mean for deliberative systems? A rich analysis of race and power needs to identify the multiple, interconnecting ways that participation in deliberative systems is deeply asymmetrical. Racism systematically denies equal participation within and across deliberative systems components: as a result, no amount of inclusion into any of them will be sufficient to see people deliberate as equals in accordance with the theory's normative underpinnings. The move to deliberative systems may even amplify the asymmetrical democracy that Hooker (Reference Hooker2016) speaks of, due to the lack of deliberative criteria, requirements, and related institutional mechanisms in some components. For example, while deliberative democrats point to the democratic contributions of protest—framing this as a way to improve the overall quality of deliberative systems precisely because of what contestatory components can bring to the table (Hendriks, Reference Hendriks2011: 8; Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson, Warren, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012: 7, 18; Mendonça and Ercan, Reference Mendonça and Ercan2015: 268–69, 273)— extending inclusion to groups and activities typically ignored by deliberative democrats does not address foundational obstacles to equal participation.
There is an asymmetrical—and decidedly white—privilege of engaging in protest in deliberative systems. In addition to systemic racism in traditional face-to-face and online deliberative democratic venues (dismissal, devaluation, lack of respect, resistance to addressing structural injustice), a core assumption in deliberative systems’ success is that expanding inclusion will better engage more people as equals and allow us to deepen the quality of this inclusion. The problem with this is twofold. First, foundational barriers to equal participation make meaningful uptake unlikely. As Scudder (Reference Scudder2020a: 1, 4) argues, deliberative democracy's problems with listening are so pervasive because of widespread unwillingness to challenge people's privilege. In practice, this means that despite well-organized protestors who highlight the structural nature of racism and note meaningful steps to remedy it, structural resistance to meaningful uptake—within systems underpinned by a racial contract—means deliberative components end up constraining protest, restricting its impact and failing to engage with activists as equals (Drake, Reference Drake2021).
We see this in Black Lives Matter (BLM), which in holding people accountable for their anti-Black racism, works particularly well as a slogan because of its “ability to articulate the dehumanizing aspects of anti-Black racism” (Taylor, Reference Taylor2016: 182). Mapping this onto the deliberative systems context, the problem is not one of communication or reason-giving: responses to BLM highlight the structural limits of inclusion. What change we do see is slow, and it remains so in the face of promises to do better following widespread protest and BLM's mainstream visibility (Subramaniam, Reference Subramaniam, O'Hara, Bradshaw and Kerr2020). Here, recognition exists alongside continued anti-Black racism (Taylor, Reference Taylor2016: 219). Even after protests in the wake of Michael Brown's murder, the number of racist, fatal police shootings continued to rise (Lowery, Reference Lowery2016: 221). There can be no meaningful deliberative democratic celebration of the system-wide success of BLM protests as long as deliberative systems fail to deal with anti-Black racism as a foundational obstacle to equality.
The second barrier to foundational equality exists because deliberative systems rely upon the opening of space and institutions to address challenges to fair deliberation. The problem—amplified by the assumption that when we deepen inclusion via deliberative systems, everyone who wishes to engage will be able to do so—is that racism substantially limits access to space, both through formal policing and through racist civilians taking it upon themselves to push racialized people out of spaces where they don't “belong,” whether directly or by calling the police: actions that often end in violence or death (Maynard, Reference Maynard2017). The problem goes beyond physical exclusion, extending to the more insidious exclusion from the definition of the public itself, which fundamentally contradicts the principle of treating all people as equals and undermines effective democratic contestation (Deutsche, Reference Deutsche1992: 38; Drake, Reference Drake2021). Access to public space, where “space itself is white” (Diverlus, Reference Diverlus, Diverlus, Hudson and Ware2020: 171), is limited in a wide array of more and less visible ways. These include state-sanctioned actions, such as the vastly disproportionate rates at which Black and Indigenous peoples are policed in and pushed out of public schools (Maynard, Reference Maynard2017: 86–89, 208–9; Morris, Reference Morris2016: 3). Pervasive systemic racism occurs in everyday public spaces and in elite areas where white privilege is especially pronounced. University communities, as just one example, frequently engage in racist behaviour, from reporting Black students and faculty for being on campus, to profiling, detaining and falsely accusing Black students when assumptions of their criminal or wait/janitorial staff capacity predominate over their professional belonging (Coates, Reference Coates2015: 42; Cottom, Reference Cottom2019; Hayward, Reference Hayward2013: 61–62). Expectations that deliberative systems’ broader scope will benefit from protest will, without deliberative theorists doing the harder work of interrogating and dismantling the structural injustice making protest necessary, inevitably fall short when it comes to principles of equality.
Dismantling Foundational Injustice in Deliberative Systems
Assumptions that we can improve flawed systems from within fail to confront the foundational and structural barriers to oppressed people's participation. An inclusion framework relies upon the willingness of those with power to listen, and give sufficient weight to, the critiques of people experiencing oppression (Scudder, Reference Scudder2020a)—a problem particularly acute for activists (Drake, Reference Drake2021) and anyone working to dismantle structural racism. As Maynard notes, “If we want to talk about equality it can't really be equality within the status quo” (Reference Maynard, Simpson, Diverlus, Hudson and Ware2020: 86). In this last section, I offer recommendations for deliberative democratic theorists who want to move beyond an inclusion framework and take up the necessary work of dismantling the systems that are incompatible with the theory's normative underpinnings of genuine equality.
1. Centring foundational inequalities in analyses of power
Examinations of power in deliberative democracy need to explicitly make structural and systemic power a key focus. This analysis—and deliberative democracy itself—needs to be anti-racist. Before setting out suggestions for ways we can enact this, I wish to address the inevitable objection: Does this make deliberative democracy (or collapse deliberative democracy into) critical race theory? In short, the answer is no—but it does need to incorporate it. Deliberative democracy's silence on the foundational challenge of white supremacy exists because of a lack of engagement with the democratic critiques developed by critical race theorists. These critiques address the core of the problem—the deliberate and continued racist oppression of people—while the deliberative literature focuses on adjustments and developments within the very systems that critical race theorists note are designed to maintain white supremacy and which deny justice and meaningful democratic participation to people who cannot claim the benefits of whiteness (Hesse, Reference Hesse2017; Hooker, Reference Hooker2016; Mills, Reference Mills1997; Olson, Reference Olson2004; Thompson, Reference Thompson2017). The literature needs to take critical race theory seriously if it aims to live up to its stated normative principles. Practically speaking, this means deliberative democratic theorists need to incorporate lessons from critical race theory into our basic infrastructure.
Recent developments in the literature provide useful starting points for this. Banerjee's arguments for decolonizing deliberative democracy are highly relevant, particularly as he notes that deliberative democracy remains hegemonic “despite efforts to be inclusive” and acknowledges the limitations of current approaches (Reference Banerjee2021: 14). Su, drawing explicitly from critical race theory in her analysis of participatory budgeting in New York City, notes ways that the deliberative process “simultaneously resists and perpetuates racial inequalities deeply embedded in American society” (Reference Su2017: 126). A key observation here is Su's analysis of the significant differences between who participates in, versus who benefits from, participatory budgeting (129) and her emphasis that “inclusion is a necessary but insufficient step toward racial equality” (139).
Other work does not explicitly draw on critical race or decolonial theory but re-examines power in important ways that, with additional reframing, can make important contributions to these critical structural goals. As they re-examine power in deliberative democracy, Curato et al. stress the need to prevent police violence and to hold institutions accountable for it (Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 51). We can build on this to explicitly call out structural racism. Curato et al.'s discussion contains an important, but general, call for accountability in the public sphere (Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 51). Without explicit mention of BLM or the disproportionate and racist police targeting of Black people, and without naming the need to hold the state responsible for structural racist violence, the problem of white supremacy evades structural accountability. The way we understand the problem matters. Below, I note measures that can help us confront white supremacy in deliberative democracy.
Make anti-racism part of deliberative design
This ought to take place in both the design and implementation of deliberations and in criteria for evaluating legitimacy. Deliberative design incorporates a number of mechanisms to improve deliberative quality. Existing practices, such as participant and advisory selection, production of informational materials, and use of mediators and facilitators can all be adjusted to incorporate anti-racist practices and ought to include people with backgrounds in critical race theory and those directly impacted by racism. When it comes to participant selection, it is not enough to make sure we are broadly inclusive: how we engage people is crucial. We need to ensure that we don't fall into a “select and done” complacency; organizers should assume responsibility for highlighting structural barriers, critically examine race as a political production (Thompson, Reference Thompson2008: 535), meaningfully engage in anti-racist analysis, and refuse to centre whiteness (Maynard and Simpson, Reference Maynard, Simpson, Diverlus, Hudson and Ware2020: 78).
Deliberative democratic theorists ought to keep foundational inequalities at the forefront and ensure that we do not limit our analysis to inclusion (Su, Reference Su2017; Scudder, Reference Scudder2020a; Drake, Reference Drake2021). Our concern ought to be the practices and assumptions leading to the normalization of white supremacy and the racist devaluation of people. We can apply Scudder's recommendation that we aim “at fostering the conditions for uptake” (Reference Scudder2020b: 514, emphasis in original) to the anti-racist context necessary to secure uptake in a way that is not only compatible with a more meaningful understanding of democracy (Reference Scudder2021: 6) but also able to explicitly recognize deliberative theory's responsibility to dismantle structures of white supremacy. This needs to be part of Banerjee's call “to investigate how different populations conceptualize and experience democracy” as we move to decolonize deliberative democracy (Reference Scudder2021: 11). We can also rethink how we approach obstacles to deliberation. For instance, Scudder (Reference Scudder2021: 513) notes that uptake only requires meaningful evaluation in the deliberative decision-making process (rather than ensuring that input affects the outcome—something that she notes is clearly contrary to deliberative democratic principles with white supremacist input). Building on this, we could actively focus on structures of white supremacy in deliberative design. After all, foundational problems go far beyond the impact of individual participants/challenges of white supremacists: when structures and systems are the root of the problem, our response must target them. This is a core part of Su's critical-race- grounded critique of participatory budgeting (Reference Su2017: 127). Su also emphasizes the need to focus on structural justice throughout all stages of deliberative processes (141)—something that deliberative systems’ design ought to prioritize in an anti-racist and decolonial context.
Use the language
We need to talk about white supremacy. We need to name racism, colonialism, sexist, ableist, anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ2S and anti-Islamic hate. The language of phobias, the use of racial (instead of racist), needs replacing with language that assigns responsibility for unjust structural violence. Drawing attention to the erasure within responsibility-eliding framings is crucial.
When the deliberative literature does not name racism as systemic injustice, waters it down by speaking of inequalities more broadly, or assumes greater inclusion will remedy unjust exclusions, it hides and entrenches the source of the problem. We should not underestimate the significance of this. As Su argues, deliberative processes “can reify status quo inequalities” when they take place without an explicit power analysis embedded in the process” (Reference Su2017: 127). The deeper problem in the simultaneous persistence of racism and its erasure in dominant analyses of power is not a lack of mechanisms to include Black people in deliberative systems but the pervasive “notion that Black people are not fully human” (Khan-Cullors and Bandele, Reference Khan-Cullors and Bandele2017: 205). We need to take responsibility for the prevalence of white narratives depicting Black people's actions as both superhuman (justifying disproportionate responses) and as subhuman (communicating the acceptability of these actions) and constructing a blameworthy/innocent dichotomy on racialized grounds (Maynard, Reference Maynard2017: 210–12; Taylor, Reference Taylor2016: 4).
Ask structural questions
Foundational inequalities and racism impact everything we talk about. Saying a particular deliberation isn't “about race” not only misses the point: it uses deliberative structures to perpetuate and entrench racist injustice. Even when the deliberative literature addresses the structural difficulties of achieving inclusion, the framework is insufficient. Critical and structural investigations are key. Notably, Curato et al. argue that “using power as a lens for deliberative democracy allows for a critical interrogation of structures and practices that constitute an uneven economy of attention”; crucially, they emphasize that this “makes some voices worth listening to over others” (Reference Curato, Hammond and Min2019: 10). To capitalize on this fully, the deliberative literature must dig deeper into the structural forces that value some voices over others. If we think of this in combination with Bächtiger and Parkinson's (Reference Bächtiger and Parkinson2019: 13) discussion of the harms that materialize when people accept unjustified claims because they fit with dominant discourses, we might amplify the work and responsibility that needs to accompany these critical interrogations. Bächtiger and Parkinson's push to pay more attention to the background context to democratic communication and to connect reason-giving to “views on who counts as an authoritative speaker; norms about ‘fitness’ of arguments and rightness of claims; and so much more” (28) has clear implications for systems that perpetuate racism. Their call “to further democratize deliberation; indeed, to repoliticize it” (82, emphasis in original) suggests the necessity of a substantial shift. The remaining work must make, and keep, foundational injustice and dismantling structures of white supremacy a core focus of deliberative legitimacy.
The disconnect between race and structural power poses a significant challenge to deliberative systems’ success. We cannot remedy the literature's lack of engagement with systemic racism by including “extra” examples or otherwise extending the inclusion framework. Nor is race something we can “neatly analyz[e] as a discrete variable” (Su, Reference Su2017: 137). Instead, we need to centre the relationship between race and democracy. Rather than sampling for diversity in deliberative forums, we need to think bigger and more critically. Schools, electoral processes, neighbourhood/urban design, healthcare, education, and so on—all the focus of deliberative forums—are deeply impacted by structural racism. Adding to Su's argument that “in working toward critical race praxis,” we need to “re-centre racial economic justice” (141), the complexity of these structures requires an intersectional analysis of race, class and the many intersecting ways people experience oppression. Deliberations that do not consistently investigate how and why this occurs enable the uninterrupted continuation of structurally unjust policies. When evaluating deliberative forums and the deliberative system itself, we need to use framings and examples that let us investigate how well (or poorly) different parts of the system, and the ways components fit together, impact broader structural injustices.
2) Differential responsibilities for listening
Twenty years ago, Mendelberg and Oleske noted that “theorists who tackle inequality at length tend to focus on the twin facts that dominant groups silence speakers from subordinate groups and that subordinate speakers do not feel empowered to speak” (Reference Mendelberg and Oleske2000: 187): both responses are insufficient because they fail to take seriously resistance from those with power. Arguing that “deliberation must have equality and community as a precondition to succeed,” Mendelberg and Oleske warn against the dangers of pursuing deliberation (186–87). While the deliberative literature has more, and more substantive, inclusion now, the basic problem is essentially unchanged, because foundational inequalities persist.
Scudder (Reference Scudder2020a: 43), in her excellent critique of the ways inclusion and empathy are insufficient evaluative criteria, addresses barriers to meaningful democratic deliberation between equals. Obstacles to listening pose a major problem to democratic deliberation, and Scudder (Reference Scudder2020a, Reference Scudder2020b) highlights the impact on meaningful uptake. While her focus is not on white supremacy, Scudder notes that “conditions of inequality and oppression make it harder for some not only to share their stories, but for their stories to be validated and even understood” (Reference Scudder2020a: 43). This is a product of the structural injustice underpinning deliberative systems.
Barriers to deliberation between equals are pervasive and often deliberately invisible. We need to analyze them as a product of oppression. Going beyond the standard deliberative response to communicative barriers, Scudder (Reference Scudder2020a) reframes the problem, grounding her applied analyses of people experiencing race, sex, gender and sexuality-based oppression and placing the onus on those with structural power and privilege who don't listen and who perpetuate structural injustice: when those with power do this, they undermine deliberative democracy's normative principles.
An important way to reframe power is Scudder et al.'s call for “empowering . . . groups to hold formal political institutions accountable” and the responsibility institutions have to “listen, recognize, and respond to citizen's voices” (Reference Scudder2021: 3). Responsibility is key: ensuring the onus is on those with structural power and privilege and who don't listen is crucial in taking structural injustice seriously. The next step is to find ways to ensure institutions do not control citizen responses in ways that fold challenges and critiques back into insufficient inclusion frameworks. Facilitating a meaningful structural response to systemic racism requires deeper analysis of our expectations for deliberants, deliberative institutions and deliberative systems. Responsibility for white supremacy needs to be at the forefront of this approach. In order to meaningfully hold those with undeserved privilege to account, the deliberative literature would benefit from a clear set of expectations: one for those who experience systemic injustices and another for those who profit, or who have profited, from them.Footnote 1
People who experience systemic racism
Rather than calling for increased inclusion and engagement of people who experience systemic racism, we need to speak about responsibilities to people in this category. A recurring problem when it comes to institutional responses to oppression is to assume, or explicitly ask, those experiencing oppression to do the work of fixing it—and often with little or no meaningful institutional support (Su, Reference Su2017). It is unjust to put additional burdens on people experiencing oppression, and it is ultimately a distraction from necessary institutional change. Those who benefit ought to be the ones doing the work. Yet in the decades since Mendelberg and Oleske underscored “the very unwillingness of dominant groups to enlarge their community” (Reference Mendelberg and Oleske2000: 186–87) in meaningfully inclusive ways, we continue to see the avoidance of the necessary structural change. Deliberative theorists and designers have a responsibility to amplify the voices and power of people experiencing systemic racism. Deepening the work on alternate modes of engagement, a core focus of communicative democracy, and encompassing developments in rhetoric, storytelling and narrative (Black, Reference Black2013; Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2012; Steiner, Reference Steiner2012; Young, Reference Young and Benhabib1996, Reference Young2000) are important, particularly if we approach them through a lens of dismantling unjust structural power.
People who profit from systemic racism
The major impetus for setting out specific responsibilities for those who profit / have profited from structural injustice is to highlight a key structural barrier to equality and offer a way to begin dismantling this. As Scudder discusses the difficulties in listening, she notes that “many citizens, especially those who enjoy economic or racial privilege, are unwilling or even unable to really hear voices that challenge their worldview or demand remediation of injustice” (Reference Scudder2020a: 2). This critique provides an important analytic link to the erasure of white supremacy and settler colonialism within deliberative democracy. As we amplify and deepen deliberative democratic listening in the ways that Scudder proposes, we need to actively engage with the impacts of oppression while centring lessons from the structural challenges of white supremacy and systemic racism. Specific actions that connect the two include the following.
Questioning the scope of projects
A number of important deliberative studies critique power at the levels of agenda-setting and issue-framing as it constrains what marginalized and dissenting participants can do (Carson, Reference Carson2001; Hendriks, Reference Hendriks2011; Johnson, Reference Johnson2008, Reference Johnson2015); despite this, there is a remaining need for deliberative analyses to engage with foundational structural injustices. Mendelberg and Oleske (Reference Mendelberg and Oleske2000) are an important exception in terms of the depth of their attention to the impact of racism within deliberations, but we need analysis explicitly connecting investigations of structural racism with the literature addressing the often invisible power of framing and agenda-setting. Moreover, we need to make sure this doesn't become a niche investigation: this bigger-picture analysis belongs in all deliberative engagements. This will put us in a better position analyzing the deliberative democratic quality, or “timbre,” of the broader systems themselves (Bächtiger and Parkinson, Reference Bächtiger and Parkinson2019: 7–8) and explicitly evaluating them for their role in white supremacist power structures.
Uptake
One way to facilitate the decentring of white supremacist power structures is to build on Scudder's listening-based analysis of uptake. Scudder pushes us to evaluate uptake in a way that makes “barriers to democracy in large, complex societies” visible, naming them to call out pervasive and oppressive structures (Reference Scudder2020a: 43). Here, uptake requires entertaining people's contributions “as a serious normative claim” (Scudder, Reference Scudder2020b: 513), which connects to her important call to measure the “deliberativeness of a democratic system” in light of a more meaningful examination of “how we understand democracy itself” (Scudder, Reference Scudder2021: 6, emphasis in original). Taken together in a context of structural injustice, these arguments underscore the imperative for deliberative theorists to take up white supremacy as a core barrier and make foundational structural injustice a consistent and thorough part of analyzing deliberative democratic legitimacy and success.
A major barrier to listening and uptake in the context of structural injustice lies in the resistance to name and dismantle structures of white supremacy. A specific and sustained focus on white supremacy can build on Scudder's call “to confront people's unwillingness to seriously engage across difference and disagreement” (Reference Scudder2020a: 1). As Scudder notes, the unwillingness standing in the way of meaningful engagement exists due to people's rejection of meaningful listening, and she emphasizes that this rejection happens “because it challenges one's own position of privilege” (Scudder, Reference Scudder2020a: 4). This observation is crucial to deliberative democracy's normative pursuit, as is the fact that Scudder frames the problem as the responsibility (and the failure) of those with power. What's crucial to note here—and to build on, as we hold deliberative systems accountable for structural injustice—is that the problem is not with everything the deliberative literature does (and doesn't do) in its focus on participation but rather on the substantial silence when it comes to listening and taking meaningful steps to abolish structures antithetical to deliberation between equals. When the problem is that those with privilege “are unwilling or even unable to really hear voices that challenge their worldview or demand remediation of injustice” (2), deliberative democrats must turn the analytic gaze inward to meaningfully reflect upon “networks of privilege and power and [its] own location within them” (117, citing Dreher, Reference Dreher2009: 451). Expanding on this, we need to apply arguments for responsibility to the structures of white supremacy and its beneficiaries, as well as to the ways that deliberative systems—even if inadvertently—enable these to continue.
White supremacy is a foundational problem presenting a devastating challenge to any meaningful argument that deliberative democracy values all people as moral and political equals. The depth of systemic racism and the ways it manifests in people's dismissal and devaluation (Hooker, Reference Hooker2017: 494; Makalani, Reference Makalani2017: 533; Maynard, Reference Maynard2017: 2) means that there is no meaningful sense in which we can talk about an equal possibility of deliberative influence, either in the present context or in the future, based on inclusion-focused efforts that aim for progress over time: when we push for inclusion into fundamentally flawed systems, we necessarily accept their white supremacist foundation. That little of substance has changed in the two decades since Mendelberg and Oleske's (Reference Mendelberg and Oleske2000) critique is telling. The harsh conclusion to draw is that deliberative democracy cannot work—at least in ways that take its normative principles seriously—as long as structural racism exists. My aim is not to abandon deliberative democracy but to figure out how we might realize its normative principles: to make it work by confronting the foundational problem.
Moving forward, we must actively work to dismantle the structures inherently constraining basic normative principles of democratic deliberation between equals. The recommendations I set out need to be part of a deeper commitment to the normative principles of deliberative democratic theory. Using Scudder's analytic focus upon “equal opportunity to influence” (Reference Scudder2020a: 6, emphasis in original) alongside Hooker's discussion of asymmetrical democracy lets us see the depth of the deliberative literature's problem. When Scudder argues “we need to de-centre deliberation from the deliberative model” in order to pursue democratic ideals, she also notes that this “requires our resistance to any communicative procedures that depart too substantially from fair communicative situations” (Reference Scudder2021: 12). Taking this to its logical—and constructively radical—conclusion in the context of foundational injustice reveals the depth of our normative failures. Overcoming these requires us to reject an inclusion framework that depends upon and erases the visibility of structural racism and white supremacy and to play an active role in highlighting and dismantling these structures.
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