Statement On Co-Chair Amendment (Prior to its Bifurcation) and Its Potential for Tokenism

GPNJ Black Caucus does not support this amendment.  Horizontal leadership always favors the privileged.  While the language in this amendment guarantees a person of color a position as co-chair, we must articulate our position that the perception will be that the de facto chair will be the one open to cis-heterosexual white males.  The nature of hegemonic culture is such that perception becomes structural/operational reality. We therefore recognize an obvious danger where the end result of our officer voting would be a scenario where a higher degree of credibility and respect would be improperly ascribed to the winner of the third (open-to-all) chair position, thus marginalizing the other two officers and rendering the notion of co-equal co-chairs operationally worthless.   

We've witnessed over the past few months how little weight a title carries within the party if the person holding that title is a person of color, and mandating diversity in these positions is little more than quintessential tokenism.  What we need to do is educate our membership on issues of racism, and foster an environment that promotes equality regardless of skin color. We must also do legitimate outreach to marginalized communities in such a way that the composition of the rank-and-file membership changes significantly. Otherwise, any diversity-related reforms of the party leadership structure will have the perception of being merely for show, and not reflective of the true nature of the Green Party of NJ.

In the meantime, the Black Caucus will be fielding candidates for leadership roles and we aspire to reach these positions through our own merits and not through tokenized positions that distract the Green Party of NJ from the pertinent issues at hand.