School of Social and Political Science

Description

In July 2022, eight candidates were nominated in the Conservative Party’s race for a new leader. With four non-white nominees, some described the race as “the most diverse in Western political history”. While Conservative Party leaders boasted about “diverse” representation, they did so by emphasizing the colour-blindness or post-racialism of Conservative politics. That is, the candidates’ racial difference mattered in order to declare that race does not matter. This presentation investigates this paradox. For instance, why was it important to insist that “despite” the fact that they are all immigrants or children of immigrants, these candidates are, like their white colleagues, supportive of “hard-line” immigration policies?

By analyzing candidates’ speeches and campaign material, which feature boot-strap immigrant stories and news media discourses, this presentation explores the political work that “diversity” does. Drawing from my research on race, the politics of representation, and the Conservative Party of Canada, this presentation attends to race as structural power. This allows us to trace the reproduction of dominant racial discourses, policies and systems, which not only foreclose possibilities for substantive diversity but also actively operate to neutralize critiques of state violence. When incorporation and assimilation are considered the markers of racial progress, enduring structural inequities are minimized. Our concern is about how power structures endure both despite and through incorporative politics.