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Andrew Yang will be the only candidate of color on stage on December 19th for the Democratic Presidential debate. How did this happen? Ego. This is the simplest explanation. We don’t need to explain the value of diversity to the Democratic Party, but we may need to have a conversation with seven white people to check their egos. Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer are the seven white people standing in the way of electing a person of color as President of the United States. It is conceivable that the first Democratic debate of 2020 could have all white candidates if the Democrats and the media continue to raise the bar on polling and fundraising. The party of President Barack Obama is systematically driving out candidates of color from the debate stage.

Some in the Democratic Party might argue that the seven white candidates mentioned above are simply the most electable, and that is what Democratic voters care about most this time around — electability. Well, the message that sends is that white is electable and non-white is not electable, which is just wrong. It was not Barack Obama’s whiteness that got him elected. It is more likely true that a Presidential candidate of color would have an easier time getting votes than a white candidate. But, if the media and the Party continue to push out candidates of color before the primaries, then we will never know.

Imagine if instead of deciding to run, the seven white people mentioned above endorsed people of color. Vice President Biden might endorse Senator Harris, Senator Sanders might endorse Stacey Abrams, Senator Warren might endorse Andrew Yang, and so on. This would guarantee a person of color becomes the leader of the free world. If you are a powerful white person running to be President of the United States and you want to empower people of color, THEN DO IT. You as a powerful white person have power to giveaway. This likely won’t happen this election cycle, but maybe next time around we can have a field of candidates that is low ego and high diversity, instead of high ego and low diversity.

Going into the December debate, Andrew Yang must draw attention to the lack of diversity in a still sizeable field of candidates. Maya Angelou once said, “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” What message are we sending our children? What would the visual of a stage full of only white Presidential candidates communicate to them? Democrats, the current trajectory of the diversity in the 2020 Democratic Primary is not ok. It will be up to the voters in the early primary states to make this right. In the mean time, we can only hope that the candidates of color stay in the race for as long as possible.

“Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.” – President Barack Obama