This LinkedIn post spotlights numerous Fortune 500 CEOs who leveraged PepsiCo experience to land C-suite roles.
The headline reads: This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a pattern
Okay, but the pattern looks like lots of White men and White women enjoyed advantages at PepsiCo, along with a handful who perhaps benefited from the groundbreaking success of former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi…?
Time published content titled, “The Tech Bro-ification of Marketing,” whereby the author believes White men are seizing control of marketing despite being outnumbered by White women.
Okay, except it’s common knowledge the White men versus White women numbers skew in favor of females, but White men still dominate in positions of power and pay.
And don’t forget White men and White women—separately and collectively—do waaaaay better in the marketing arena than people of color.
The true problem remains the whitewashing—that is, white privilege, systemic whiteness, and white supremacy—of marketing.
The Tech Bro-ification of Marketing
By Miranda Shanahan
Miranda Shanahan is a brand consultant, content creator, and speaker.
Scroll through LinkedIn, and you will find a flurry of new job listings with curious titles: “Narrative Engineer”, “UGC Engineer”, “Media Engineer.” At first glance, they sound like entirely new disciplines. Look closer, and they feel suspiciously familiar.
As someone who has built a decade-long career in the marketing industry, I wondered: Why are these marketing roles being relabeled? I took my question to social media. “Is marketing being rebranded so boys can do it too?” I quipped on TikTok between meetings.
I checked back a few hours later, and my comments section was aflame with marketers, tech folk, and VCs. Some had sensed something was off but couldn’t quite name it; others shared the most absurd titles they’d come across; and some pushed back, arguing that something genuinely new was emerging.
The tech bro-ification of marketing is underway. It’s not the first time a profession has been repackaged like this. But beneath this trend lies a broader pattern around how work is named, coded, and valued. The question: why is this happening to marketing—and why now?
Part of the answer lies in who marketing has come to be associated with. According to a study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 67% to 70% of marketing practitioners are women, making it one of the few female-dominated fields in the corporate sector. Research consistently shows that as a profession becomes associated with women, its pay and status tend to decline, and marketing is no exception. Plenty of professions skew one way or another, but those patterns aren’t driven by biology but rather our cultural stereotypes about who is good at what kind of work.
The marketing industry is a broad church, but decades of cultural shorthand have flattened it into something quite specific. Shows like Sex and the City and, more recently, Emily in Paris have portrayed marketing as women and gay men throwing parties and coming up with zany ideas. Over on social media, this has calcified into the “marketing girlie” trope: the personality hire who makes things pretty in Canva and forces her boss to do TikTok dances. The cliché of a tech bro, by contrast, is that of a hyper-optimized lone wolf genius. These are stereotypes, but they have economic implications.
The perceived value of a profession, the language used to describe it, and who is seen to be performing it have always been intertwined. Before “software engineer” was a job title, coding was a secretarial task, mainly done by women. Cosmopolitan even ran an article in 1967 titled The Computer Girls, touting it as an ideal career for women.
Software was “soft” work versus the “hard” work of building physical things. Even Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist at NASA in the 1960s, described feeling like a misplaced “stepchild” among the hardware engineers.
Hamilton coined the term “software engineer” in an effort to get her work taken seriously, much to the amusement of her almost exclusively male colleagues. Yet through the 70s and 80s, “software engineering” emerged as a bona fide profession: well-paid, prestigious, and over time, predominantly male.
There were many different forces responsible for the shifting demographics of the software engineering profession, but it is undeniable that changing language has a habit of changing who feels welcome. Research has shown that women are less likely to apply for roles unless they feel they are 100% qualified or, in other words, welcome.
The same dynamic is now playing out in marketing in reverse. In consumer brands, marketing has always been a core discipline. I would argue Nike’s most valuable asset isn’t the technical spec of a sneaker, but the story around it. However, in Silicon Valley, the hierarchy works differently: those who build sit above those who sell. Except now the very thing they’ve relied on for growth—coding and technical creation—has been commoditized by AI.
The first inkling of recalibration came when tech bros suddenly started emphasizing the importance of taste. “Taste is a new core skill,” declared OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. “In the AI age, taste will become even more important. When anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make,” pronounced technologist Paul Graham.
As Snap CEO Evan Spiegel put it: AI makes it easier to build new products, so distribution is the biggest challenge facing consumer technology businesses.
The truth is that taste, distribution, and marketing have always been important. But now that AI is cheapening other kinds of work, tech has been forced to admit that marketing actually matters.
The problem is, “marketing” comes with baggage. Decades of cultural coding have made it a hard sell internally, so tech is dressing it up in clothes they feel comfortable wearing. Brand strategists become narrative engineers. Marketing managers become growth architects. This shouldn't be much of a surprise. Tech has a penchant for taking familiar ideas and selling them back to us as revolutionary. Taxis become Ubers, bed and breakfasts become Airbnbs. Marketing is just the Emperor’s latest outfit.
In some cases, these roles are genuinely becoming more technical, but mostly the language is being stretched so thin it’s hard to separate reality from corporate fiction. Just like using a calculator doesn’t make you a mathematician, using vibe coding and automation tools doesn’t make you an engineer. Marketing has always been part science, part art. The irony is, AI is automating the technical parts faster than anything else. Creative intuition, human judgment, and, yes, taste, are still the hardest things to replace. Yet still, employers reach for technical language to signal value.
Perhaps the upside will be that job titles with a technical veneer could command higher salaries and more respect from leaders who respond better to “engineer” than “marketer.” The problem, though, is the more we conflate value with tech, the more we devalue the art of marketing and the people who practice it.
It might not seem that deep, but marketing’s rebrand is part of a bigger pattern. When you control the vocabulary of a field, you decide who deserves a place. Tech has always been good at making familiar ideas feel like breakthroughs, and marketing is just the latest one.
Advertising Age published a lengthy fluff piece on “Droga5’s diaspora”—spotlighting White advertising agencies whose White principals emerged from the White ranks of the White advertising agency launched by David Droga.
Diaspora seems an odd term to use for the perceived phenomenon. Cronyism or Brotopia might be more appropriate.
The scenario underscores an Adland reality: White men leverage politics, privileges, and advantages to dominate the field.
Don’t forget Droga5 staged the Ted Royer scandal too.
Diaspora? For the legacy of this place, the best term might be Broga5.
Behind Droga5’s diaspora—and why it’s not a ‘coincidence’
By Ewan Larkin
Walking around the Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards gala last month, everywhere David Droga turned, there were familiar faces—including those who had once sat across from him on the couch in his office. This time, however, they were collecting awards for agencies of their own. “The magnitude of it was revealed there,” the Australian expat said in an interview. “That was the first time I was like, ‘Oh wow. It really is pervasive.’”
Droga is referring to the diaspora of independent agency founders who have emerged from Droga5’s ranks over the past several years—among them the creators of Isle of Any, American Haiku, Mirimar, Alto and Mojo Supermarket. These new guard leaders learned their trade at Droga5, a creative hothouse founded in 2006 that grew from a Lafayette Street fledgling into a Wall Street heavyweight and Ad Age’s Agency of the Decade.
Not all of these founders came up exclusively at Droga5; some also hail from storied creative agencies such as BBDO and Wieden+Kennedy, but for each of them, it was the last stop before hanging their own shingle.
“I don’t think it’s coincidence at all,” said John McKelvey, chief creative officer of 6-year-old Mirimar, which now counts Poppi and Rocket Cos. as clients. “Some of the DNA from those moments is alive in our new agencies.”
Ad Age spoke with several of the founders, as well as Droga himself, to understand what it was about one agency that produced so many others—the culture that bred independence, the lessons carried forward, the relationships that endured and the occasional tension that comes with building something new in the shadow of something great.
Built to leave
It’s easy to see this situation as something of a double-edged sword for Droga. Many of the industry’s hottest shops have spawned from under his tutelage, but that also means talent keeps walking out the door.
Droga, however, said he “doesn’t begrudge anybody that goes off to do something great.” He’s also quick to make clear the departures haven’t gutted Droga5, with the Accenture Song-owned agency recently nabbing Ad Age’s Global Network of the Year following an overhaul of its leadership team.
“There’s no bittersweetness for me at all,” said Droga, who recently stepped out of the Song CEO role and became vice chair of Accenture. He said one of his greatest dilemmas during his time at the helm of Droga5, which he sold to Accenture in 2019 for about $475 million, was having more great talent than he had room for at the top.
It’s natural that, at some point, “they are going to have to go off and do their own thing,” Droga said.
Droga5 is not the only agency to have seeded a new generation of independents. Over its 43 years in existence, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the San Francisco-based Omnicom agency, has seen its own employees go on to launch shops including nice&frank, Bandits & Friends, Optimism BH and Argonaut.
Like Droga, GS&P’s co-founders Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein understand that talent walking out the door is part of the deal, said Sarah Thompson, GS&P’s CEO and a former longtime executive at Droga5. “They’re all three very confident people,” Thompson said, and they recognize “it’s never just about one person.”
The culture inside Droga5, former employees said, encouraged independence and entrepreneurship. Droga’s stories of leaving Publicis Groupe—after turning Saatchi & Saatchi into one of the most talked-about agencies in the world—to build something from scratch was the kind of inspiration you couldn’t readily find at a holding company.
“When you have a guy standing up and saying, ‘When I quit my job and did this’ like 900 times a year, it seeps into your head,” said Mo Said, founder of Mojo Supermarket. “And then you’re like, ‘Maybe I should do that.’”
Droga deliberately avoided imposing a house style, making room for vastly different creative voices to develop alongside each other. You can see that in the alumni shops: Jonny Bauer’s business transformation consultancy Fundamentalco, for example, bears little resemblance to Mirimar, which operates at the intersection of advertising and entertainment.
Droga5 was also intensely competitive, multiple founders made clear, but driven by ambition. “I never worked as hard anywhere as I did at Droga5, and I was never surrounded by the same number of driven people,” said Thom Glover, founder and chief creative officer of American Haiku, Ad Age’s 2026 Newcomer Agency of the Year. Other former executives would go as far as to call the atmosphere cutthroat, a meritocracy where, as Said put it, “if you were really creative and really good and you delivered, you stayed; and if you didn’t, you didn’t.”
Droga has never been shy about his determination to always be the best, and that pressure isn’t for everyone, but those who thrived within the agency say it left them well-equipped to go it alone. Felix Richter spent over a decade at Droga5 before leaving in 2022, not to start his own shop, but to join independent agency Mother, where he has risen to global chief creative officer and earned Ad Age’s 2026 Chief Creative Officer of the Year honor.
Still, Richter understands why so many of his friends and former colleagues have taken the risk.
“When you’re successful at Droga, you leave with the confidence that you’re able to be successful on your own,” he said. Added Laurie Howell, co-founder of startup creative boutique and Ad Age 2026 Creative Agency of the Year Isle of Any: “Being around that, seeing what David was doing with the company, made you think that it was possible.”
“There’s an osmosis of that—you go, ‘Oh, okay, cool. I can see how this works,’” said Howell.
While most of the indie agencies that have emerged from Droga5 appear to have been founded by men, Karen Land Short, a longtime Droga5 creative leader who went on to Accenture Song, recently founded her own shop, 400 Humans. Droga5 also pointed to a number of female alumni who have gone on to senior leadership roles across the industry, including Tara Lawall, chief creative officer at Rethink New York; Susie Nam, CEO of Publicis Creative U.S.; and Lindsay Cole, president of Uncommon New York.
Lessons learned from Droga5
For some ex-employees, striking out on their own provided an opportunity to scratch a different itch. Hannes Ciatti, who opened Alto in 2019 after co-founding JohnxHannes alongside Mirimar’s McKelvey, wanted to build a shop that reflected the nature of agency-client relationships, with marketers gravitating towards project-based assignments. His time at Droga5, he said, showed him what to “protect and what to shed” at Alto; he’s betting that a small, senior team armed with the right tech and freelancers can do what once took hundreds of people.
“I’m trying to keep the ambition of a place like Droga5, but build it also for the realities of 2026,” Ciatti told Ad Age.
Droga, for his part, gets why. He noted that peak Droga5 New York was around 850 people, a scale he doesn’t think a creative agency needs to reach anymore. “Hannes is right,” he said of Ciatti’s approach.
Isle of Any founders Howell and Toby Treyer-Evans are leaning into their roots as industrial designers, blending product design and experiential work with advertising. The British-born duo is looking to move away from what they see as the “project” model most shops employ, prototyping early and iterating often. In other agencies, “there’s a process to how you make things,” Howell said. “We’re trying to collapse it all.”
Indie founders are, to some degree, going it alone, and the pressure to stay afloat presents the temptation to appease clients at the expense of the work. Droga5, though, taught employees the opposite instinct.
McKelvey described weekly Acela rides to Baltimore, and Droga’s work building creative trust with Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, as a crash course in client relationships. Droga “taught me a lot ... about how much nerve it takes to protect an idea before everyone understands it,” Ciatti said.
“There’s actually a bigger reward when you do work that might get you fired,” he added. “That was a big learning curve for me—not being afraid to be brave, sometimes needing to say no to lawyers or people that wanted to stop you.”
These founders cited Droga’s hands-on approach to the work and willingness to back his teams in client meetings, among other things. Many said he was involved as they prepared to strike out on their own, offering advice on everything from finances to landing first clients. As McKelvey prepared to leave, Droga told him the door would always be open if things didn’t pan out.
“Think about the confidence of someone telling you if this thing fails, the worst thing that’s going to happen is you’ll get a great job,” McKelvey said.
Bits of camaraderie, bits of tension
Some of these agencies, like Isle of Any, are now working with former Droga5 clients. The shop has drawn early raves for campaigns with Coinbase, OpenAI and The New York Times—a client they’d worked with for over six years back at Droga5. Treyer-Evans, however, said Isle of Any is careful to keep a clean break from their former shop, never poaching clients or staff.
Droga said he has no issue with the client overlap, noting that he introduced Isle of Any’s founders to Coinbase, the same client Accenture Song worked with on the 2022 Super Bowl QR code spot. “As long as great work is coming out of it, and it moves our industry forward, I’m not that insecure about it, to be honest,” he said.
American Haiku has staffed up with several Droga5 alumni, including Jessica Kingsbery, formerly managing director of Droga5 New York, who was named CEO. The agency’s heavy Droga5 representation wasn’t “by design,” Glover said, though it did result in an “awkward conversation” with Droga himself. “Those people all have a way of working and communicating with each other that makes it easy when you’re small and you want to get a lot done,” he explained.
Droga understands this part of the business well; he spent years bringing trusted people with him across stints in Singapore, London and beyond. Still, the AAF Hall of Famer is competitive and doesn’t want to see Droga5 hurt.
“You can’t come to me for advice one day but then also go around my back and take people the next day,” said Droga.
Said, who also hired Droga5 employees heavily early on, eventually came to see it the same way, that the “etiquette of having a mentor and stealing from a mentor” didn’t sit right.
As for the founders’ relationships with each other, not everyone talks all the time, but there is a general sense that the line is always open. Many of the former employees said they have a low-fi get-together at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a slice of camaraderie that serves as a reprieve from the competition. “We’re on pitch lists together, we’re going after the same candidates,” said Glover. “But it’s all generally friendly.”
Across Ad Age’s conversations with Droga5 alumni, it’s evident that some are keen to avoid being pigeonholed as just another shop that came out of the agency. Said found himself feeling the same way in the first few years out of the gate, but time has a way of softening that instinct, especially when people start leaving Mojo Supermarket to start agencies of their own.
After Mojo Supermarket won Ad Age’s Small Agency of the Year in 2022, Said wanted to send the award straight to Droga. “I was just like, I’m so happy to be the ‘Better Call Saul’ to your ‘Breaking Bad,’” he recalled.
“We will never be that good of a show. But there are so many spinoffs that are bad, for one to be kind of good is the greatest compliment to you,” he added.
Advertising Age published a perspective pushing for diverse creative leadership in White advertising agencies throughout the UK.
As routinely noted by this blog, the UK and US have key similarities involving DEIBA+ in Adland; that is, despite vehement denials, both countries are strong supporters of systemic racism. From a creative angle, it could be argued the two were original inventors of White exclusivity and racial-ethnic discrimination.
The opinion piece even mimics the contrived and clichéd “solutions” that are proven failures, including:
• Recruit embryos from underserved communities
• Rejigger culturally clueless hiring practices for inclusivity
• Remodel workplaces to reduce White space and White noise
• Regurgitate performative PR and reconstruct heat shields
The headline reads: Why agencies should open new paths to creative leadership.
Yet the suggestions lead to a familiar and well-trodden path of privilege.
Why agencies should open new paths to creative leadership
By Nathan Gainford
Creative leadership still follows a narrow path. Most agency leaders share similar backgrounds, education and networks, but when the same types of people dominate creative management, the output suffers. It starts to look the same, miss the mark, or, worse, cause damage.
Just 16% of people working full-time in the U.K.’s creative industries come from working-class backgrounds, according to the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre. Despite efforts to widen access, the industry still privileges linear careers: university to junior role to creative lead. But not everyone gets early exposure to these opportunities, especially those from working-class or non-traditional backgrounds.
We need more creative leaders who’ve come through different doors and bring fresh thinking with them. If everyone’s had the same education, same work experience, same worldview, you get sameness.
This isn’t just a diversity issue, but a creativity issue. You miss out on the punch and originality that comes when people see things differently. They’re in the minority, but many of the best creative leaders I’ve worked with didn’t follow that route. They may have entered later or come from outside the usual networks, but that perspective is what made them great.
So, how do today’s creative leaders unlock more of that talent?
Start early and build the pipeline
Creative industry leaders need to build long-term relationships with schools in less privileged areas to show young people what these jobs actually look like. Great examples include the organization We Rise in South London, which builds real pathways into creative careers through mentoring and paid internships, and Common People, whose new school tour will send working-class creatives into 100 schools across the U.K. to talk honestly about how they got in and what’s possible.
Creative leaders need to seek out these types of initiatives and collaborate with them, or even start them. It’s our responsibility, but also for our own benefit.
Rethink how you hire and promote
Traditional interviews and degree requirements shut out a lot of great people, and automated CV scans don’t pick up potential; they just reinforce what’s already there. Some agencies have had success running open-intake programs where candidates experience different roles, respond to real briefs and show what they can do in a more practical, inclusive setting. These programs often surface talent that would be overlooked by traditional hiring.
Stop confusing confidence with capability
Agencies tend to hire and promote based on confidence—people who speak well in interviews, who assert themselves in meetings. But it’s not the same as capability. Confidence is often taught, especially in private education, while others may have great insight and ideas but not the same learned presentation style.
That doesn’t mean they can’t lead. Leaders need to create cultures that give space for different voices to be heard and nurture all talent to rise through the ranks.
Promote for perspective
Leadership shouldn’t be reserved for those who started in the industry young or followed a traditional path. Many discover their creative instinct later in their careers, but that doesn’t make them any less capable. Leadership skills can come from many places, and a non-linear CV doesn’t mean a lack of talent or passion. They bring their instincts, broader perspectives and the kinds of qualities we should be rewarding.
Build inclusive cultures
It’s not enough to hire people from different backgrounds; they need to feel safe and encouraged to contribute. If only the most senior people speak, or if junior staff are never invited to offer a point of view, you’ll miss out on new thinking. Time pressure can make it tempting to default to the loudest or most familiar ideas.
But the best creative work often comes from unlikely places, when someone sees a problem differently or asks a question no one else has thought to ask. Leaders need to make space for these. Show people empathy, and they will feel like they can open up and share their ideas.
Push for sector-wide change
Individual agencies can make changes, but broader progress requires sector-wide action. Industry bodies should play a more active role, through sharing data, setting standards and supporting outreach. Leaders can and should lobby for change.
This isn’t about criticizing privilege. It’s about opening things up for everyone. It’s about moving away from hiring for “cultural fit” and towards “cultural add.” What new way of thinking does this person bring? What blind spot might they help us see?
Creative leadership shouldn’t be defined by who got here quickest or by the most traditional route, but by perspective, empathy, curiosity and the ability to build work that speaks to different and diverse audiences. Different perspectives are what keep our industry relevant. And ultimately, they’re what help us reflect and persuade the world around us.
At The New York Times Magazine, Kwame Anthony Appiah presented provocative perspectives on privilege pertaining to interns. There are implications and considerations for Adland, where most White advertising agencies’ internships are rife with privilege, politics, performative PR, and prejudice—from nepotism to cronyism to sexism to school favoritism.
Today is National Ice Cream Day. Adland celebrates with scoops of vanilla in White bowls on White tables…
The ADCOLOR® State Of The Workplace Study made reference to yet another DEI acronym—DIRE, which stands for Diversity, Inclusion, Respect, and Equity.
In real-life context, companies draft DIRE policy statements to communicate faux commitment to progress. At most White advertising agencies, the letters could mean Deceptively Insincere Rhetorical Excrement.
The semi-clever term injects a performative sense of urgency, as well as a disingenuous challenge to counter the disrespect inherent with inequality and systemic racism.
For Adland, however, a better R-word might be Responsibility. That is, authentic dedication demands accountability. Firms barely view DEI as a business imperative—and steadfastly refuse to consider the moral and ethical implications. Yet resisting responsibility is a denial of reality.
As Spider-Man recognized, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The ruling majority in Adland has enjoyed its position of power forever. Regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, respect, belonging, or any other phrase in the lexicon, there has been an abject lack of responsibility.
With White power comes great irresponsibility.
Stumbled across the ADCOLOR® State Of The Workplace Study, which warrants color commentary including:
• The downloadable pdf is titled, “White Paper Master.” Perfect.
• The “study” makes ample use of quotes from the Digiday confessions series. Anonymous rants—from a publisher who has openly expressed disdain and disinterest with Adland to boot—are hardly suitable sources for a credible exposition, no?
• The credited “Research and Management Team” behind the “study” is entirely comprised of women—and predominately women of color. So much for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Half of the “Research and Management Team” is from a single consultancy. While the consultants undoubtedly delivered professional services, it looks like ADCOLOR® delegated diversity documentation.
• The “study” seemingly regurgitates the same data, content, opinions, suggestions, and action plans that have been forwarded by every DE&I report ever published. It’s always amazing how common knowledge and common sense are routinely presented as breakthrough exposé on the topic.
• The most outrageous part? The ADCOLOR® State Of The Workplace Study covers the first segment of a three-part examination. Which means there will be at least two more white papers—with zero effect on White privilege in Adland.
The New York Times published a perspective titled, “The Failure of Progressive Movements,” focusing on the perceived shortcomings of Occupy Wall Street, #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter. While the trio initially sparked passions, “none of the three movements have come close to achieving their ambitions.”
Adland certainly reflects the phenomena in semi-twisted ways.
Given the greed of White holding companies—with CEOs collecting multimillion-dollar salaries—the 1 percent are literally in charge.
#MeToo was more moment versus movement, where Diet Madison Avenue had a shorter shelf life than a can of Diet Coke. And gender pay gaps have expanded.
As for Black Lives Matter, even Human Heat Shields are among the diminished, dumped, and departed. And racial underrepresentation has extended.
Yet does not achieving their ambitions constitute failure or corroborate success—i.e., the overpowering success of White privilege and systemic racism?
The Failure of Progressive Movements
Prominent movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter have had an impact. But none achieved their ambitions.
By David Leonhardt
Three progressive movements have risen to prominence over the past 15 years and vowed to create a fairer America: Occupy Wall Street, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.
All of them have had an impact. Occupy popularized the idea of the 1 percent and the 99 percent. #MeToo led to the firing (and sometimes jailing) of sexual predators, as well as the hiring of more women in prominent jobs. Black Lives Matter led to policing reforms in some cities and the hiring of more Black Americans in prominent jobs.
Still, none of the three movements have come close to achieving their ambitions.
Congress has not passed any major laws to reduce economic, gender or racial inequality, such as a wealth tax, universal pre-K or nationwide police reforms. Instead, taxes on the affluent are near their lowest level in decades, and the number of killings by the police remains largely unchanged. “The term ‘reckoning’ was invoked again and again, and yet we don’t seem to have reckoned with any of our problems in any meaningful way,” Fredrik deBoer, a popular Substack newsletter writer, argues in a new book.
What explains these disappointments? In part, it’s simply that political change is fantastically difficult and often takes decades. But the degree of difficulty is only part of the story.
The movements also bear some responsibility for their disappointments. Above all, they made decisions geared more toward changing elite segments of American society — like academia, Hollywood and the national media — than toward passing new laws and changing most people’s lives.
That’s the central argument of deBoer’s book, “How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement.” It has helped me think about American politics, and I want to devote today’s newsletter to these issues.
Radical and practical
The most successful political movements tend to share a few features. They start with activists whose goals can seem so audacious as to be unrealistic. (Otherwise, there would be no need for a movement.) Over time, the movement’s leaders make careful decisions about how to accomplish at least some of those goals. They appeal to public opinion. They collaborate with unlikely allies. They work the system to change the system.
It was true of the civil rights movement, which combined radical aims with patriotic symbols and nonviolent protest. More recently, the gay rights movement accomplished rapid change partly by emphasizing traditional values like marriage and military service. The lessons also apply to the political right: Abortion opponents spent decades patiently taking over the Republican Party and making the case that voters have a right to choose their own policies, state by state.
Recent progressive movements have tended to be less strategic, explains deBoer, a self-described leftist. Occupy celebrated its lack of structure, including its lack of concrete goals. “Demands are disempowering since they require someone else to respond,” one Occupy protester told The New York Times in 2011. Black Lives Matter refused to name leaders, contrasting its approach with the old top-down civil rights movement. #MeToo, befitting its hashtag, never quite became an organized movement.
None of the three created a mass organization with a long-term plan — as labor unions, civil rights groups, evangelical Christians and other successful movements did in past decades.
Occupy and Black Lives Matter also allowed unpopular positions to shape their public image — and weaken them. For instance, polling shows that most Black Americans support major changes to policing but not less policing. Much of Black Lives Matter, however, focused on cutting police funding. One organizer wrote a Times Opinion article titled “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”
The recent movements have instead had more success changing elite institutions that tend to be filled by fellow liberals. The winners of prestigious cultural awards have become more diverse. Media organizations now capitalize Black when describing somebody’s race. President Biden has made Juneteenth a federal holiday. Universities emphasize identity in their curriculums.
Symbols over substance
These are real changes, but deBoer notes that they have little effect on most people’s lives. They instead reflect what the political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi TáÃwò calls the “elite capture” of social justice campaigns. “Today,” deBoer writes, “left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.” For that reason, these spaces prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete,” deBoer argues.
(That point is related to a continuing theme of this newsletter: the class inversion of American politics.)
DeBoer’s writing can be withering, as the best polemics often are, and few people will agree with all of his arguments. But his central point is important, whether you’re part of the political left, center or right: Calling out injustice isn’t the same as fighting it.
“The spirit of 2020 was always a righteous spirit, and the people and organizations that powered that moment had legitimate grievances and moral demands,” he writes. “What we need is practicality, resilience and a plan.”
