Mr. Seaver’s non-answers on the nature of the race-baiting scandal of 2020 parallel and complement his predecessors’ radio silence on precisely who was behind the race-laced anti-Jake Tonkel ads put out by the now defunct Silicon Valley Organization (SVO) political action committee (PAC) (https://sanjosespotlight.com/embattled-san-jose-business-group-names-new-interim-ceo-blames-storefront-political-media/). That kind of opaque treatment of a serious issue tells us everything about an organization that sells itself–and is sold by its mainstream media minions–as the shadow government, in effect the real government, behind the ostensibly elected ones at the local level. SVO will not even come clean on who did what, when and why. So what should we expect from SVO “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “being representative” and what could such terms possibly mean for what is essentially a business lobby?

The SVO’s racialized impacts stem mainly from the activities of its now-defunct PAC but from its policy and lobbying activities on behalf of big businesses, including real estate property owners. SVO lobbying activities–about which it openly brags (https://www.thesvo.com/policy-watch; https://www.thesvo.com/past-accomplishments)–are aimed at reducing taxes on businesses; minimizing worker wages and protections (think hazard pay during the pandemic); reducing environmental regulations; and reducing employer mandates in general. Such a lobbying agenda is always aimed at beefing up the bottom line, on juicing business profits.

To the extent the lobby is successful–and that lobby is almost always successful–the downsides are deficient wages and constrained living levels, shoddy working conditions, environmental health and safety hazards, and a chronically underfunded public sector unable (and often unwilling) to counteract these tendencies. Who bears the economic and social brunt of these downsides? Think about it.

Rank and file working people, the working poor and the poor in general, i.e. the vast majority of residents, are the casualties. Around here these are disproportionately Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and Black who disparately bear the inevitable damage from “normal” business operations. In this context “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “being representative” must mean spreading the damage among Whites and people of color relative to their proportional demographic weights.

The racial impact of the SVO and its members is therefore systemic in that the business system shaped by SVO influence over government policy produces serious negative outcomes that, given the demographics of our city and region, fall on people of color and the poor disproportionately. SVO support for specific business-first candidates and policies exacerbate the dilemma, but the basic effects of the SVO and its members are structural and persistent for working people of color. The real scandal here is that negative racial outcomes on a large scale are business as usual for the SVO. That is unlikely to change in any significant way with a new SVO leader, whatever the new leader’s color, ethnicity or gender or how many times the new leader utters woke catchphrases.