Here is why 'inexperienced to hold office' is a stupid stupid argument

The Baltimore Sun ran this editorial, among considerable praise, questioning whether the #BlackLivesMatter activist, now a Baltimore mayoral candidate, Deray Mckesson has enough “experience” to run for the office?  Here is what the editorial suggests:


“There are still plenty of questions about whether he has the experience necessary to manage an enterprise as sprawling as the Baltimore City government or whether someone who has risen to prominence as a protester can effectively build support for change from inside the political system. Unlike most of the other major candidates in the race, his experience and record have not been thoroughly vetted, and we don't know whether he will be able to run an effective campaign.”


Granted, this will be a debate for the Baltemoreans to decide. But as an outsider, a guy at the other end of the globe watching US politics unfold, I think I might have just a few lines to contribute to this conversation on ‘public office experience’.  Not only because I think McKesson’s victory will have an encouraging impact on progressive politics everywhere – it will-, but because I think this type of smear campaign waged against grassroots representatives is a common tactic universally employed by the political elite everywhere.


The whole reality behind the myth of experience is a simple one: 


We live in a class society, shaped by the elites, ran by the elites, benefitting the elites. Public offices, at whichever level available, with very few exceptions are occupied by the members of the elite or those hand picked by the elite.  The injustice at the core of the system is specifically designed to ensure the majority of the population, minorities and people of color in particular, are almost always, deprived of access to experience any sort of self emancipation, taking their lives in their own hands, being in the driving wheel for the very decisions that have an impact on their lives.  


In this word we live in, we are never truly experienced in governing ourselves. We are just never allowed to.


Call it the voter ID laws, call it the 2 party system, money in politics, media smear, artificial thresholds put to block grassroots movements from entering the legislature, etc. The list goes on.  In this world we live in, experience of governing one’s self is still a commodity.


And in Mckesson’s case, the banality of the ‘no experience’ argument is even more obvious.  In a country governed since the dawn of time by rich White men, it is an insult -and a very absurd one- to call a working class Black teacher ‘inexperienced to run for office’.  There is a very good reason why he never got to acquire that experience: You!


So my advice to Mckesson: Don’t let these experience nonsense get to you Deray. You have all the experience you need standing on the shoulders of a grassroots movement that has been brewing generation after generation.  You talk to your fellow activits, you never disconnect, you learn at each turn. With this, you learn, much more and much faster, than any office can possibly give you.


And good luck man, hope you make it. 


Alper    @alperard