March 19, 2024 12:36 PM UTC

Who Stands Up For "Underrepresented" Men? Scott Bottoms, Baby!

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday was the annual Latino/a Advocacy Day at the Colorado State Capitol, an annual event that like so many other routine functions at the Capitol didn’t result in much controversy in the “before times”–that sometimes-mythologized halcyon period before either the global pandemic or Donald Trump where the discourse under the Dome was somewhat less consistently bitter and acrimonious than it is today.

But as observant readers have already realized from this foreshadowing, the debate yesterday over House Joint Resolution 24-1020 honoring Latino/a Advocacy Day took the turn we’ve come to expect for the worse–or, in this case, Rep. Scott “There Is No” Bottoms living up to his nickname:

BOTTOMS: Thank you Madame Speaker. I uh understand the uh concept of parity, and uh, I’m not an affirmative action kind of person but I understand the concept of parity, and Latinos are the most underrepresented group in this House. There’s no doubt about that. But if we really believe in parity, we need to look at some other statistics. Males are also underrepresented in this House, according to the demographics of Colorado, females are overrepresented. [Pols emphasis] Un, whites are overrepresentative, overrepresentative in this House, and so are Blacks. They’re overrepresented in this House. The LGBT community is overrepresented by three times, so uh when we’re starting to talk about ‘parity,’ does that mean we bring the other groups down and up also? Or do we just focus on one group? Focusing on one group is not consistent with what the actual word parity means.

Rep. Bottoms subjected the word “parity” to a semantic beating, but here’s what the resolution actually says:

Latinas and Latinos represent more than twenty-four percent of Colorado’s population. Some legislative districts have even greater percentages of Latina and Latino voters and constituents. Therefore, events like Latino/a Advocacy Day are essential to improve parity of representation in the statewide legislative body…

Obviously, no one is talking about enforcing “parity” in the Colorado General Assembly by any external means, simply improving representation of a historically underrepresented group by participation–and the reason we “focus on one group” on this given day is precisely because that group has been historically underrepresented.

Which has, say it slowly with us, never been a problem for males.

Again, there’s no need for this pointless contrarianism in response to every single issue. Metaphorically dying on every hill is a choice blowhards like Bottoms make. And often like yesterday, Bottoms exposes the deep ignorance at the heart of these silly objections better than Democrats could themselves.