DOES diversity matter? Most of the talk that surrounds the apparent imminent nomination of Kamala Harris to be the US Democratic Party presidential nominee appears to centre on a few narrow issues.

The first is that she is not “Genocide Joe” Biden. The second is that she is not what many regard as the racist, misogynist and now convicted felon, former president Donald Trump.

But also she is talked of as the first woman of colour standing on behalf of one of the main parties for what the US, in its usual over-the-top way, refers to as the most powerful position on Earth.

Obviously, the world has been subjected to an African-American US president before in the shape of Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton stood for the post in 2016 but lost out to Trump.

Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American elected to the US Congress in 1968, was also the first to seek nomination for the presidency for either of the outfits that form the US two-party system. Unlike Harris, Chisholm was known for being a formidable opponent of economic, social and political injustice.

Harris is the first black woman and south Asian to be a US vice-president and she certainly has a fighting chance of winning the presidency. But the questions are: does this matter, and if so, then for who?

I feel the need to reword an old anarchist saying: “If having a black person in a senior position changed anything, they would abolish it.”

One look at the front benches of the British Conservative Party over the last few years demonstrates that merely having “people of colour” in senior positions itself is absolutely no recipe for change.

In fact, two of the most objectionable British home secretaries in the history of that usually reactionary role have been people of Asian descent. An African descendant Tory foreign secretary enthusiastically followed the leadership of the US on its varying and increasing international misadventures. Labour’s newly appointed person to the role looks set to follow the same bloodied road.

In the US, the very likeable but nevertheless hands-bloodied Obama had no problem with bombing the hell out of the defenceless.

A report by the New York-based think tank the Council on Foreign Relations said that Obama authorised a total of 24,287 bombs to be dropped on Syria and Iraq during his final year in office alone.

He also authorised the bombing of Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

I am sure that the people being bombed in these countries did not draw any distinction between losing their loved ones or their homes to orders given by a black or white man, although they may — for some reason — have expected better from the seemingly very amiable Obama.

Obama actually had fewer US soldiers fighting on the ground but he massively expanded the use of unmanned air strikes and left the White House having authorised 10 times more drone strikes than war criminal George W Bush did, and was at war for longer than any president in US history.

Obama was an equal-opportunity bomber. He didn’t seem to care where you were from, whether it was Asia or Africa. If you went against the interests of US monopoly capital — otherwise known as “US strategic interests” — you were likely to be bombed.

Having been “first black” on a number of occasions myself, I am acutely aware of the pressures that can arise. Not least of which is where you come across people who claim to be all in favour of breaking the “colour line,” only to find to your disappointment that the reality is completely different.

The times when you reach these positions and then discover that there are a whole group of people that thoroughly resent the black person getting the role — because we have only apparently ever reached these levels because of some kind of positive discrimination — hardly ever because of our abilities.

The choice then for the first black is to decide whether to go along with what your own particular establishment wants you to do — and of course, you may actually believe those things — or to be oppositional and take your own road.

Taking the latter road is often rather lonely as well as being a well-known opportunity for those who never wanted you there in the first place to say “I told you so” or to argue that you were never actually up for the job.

Like any rational human being, I am of course fully in favour of more diversity in senior positions of any organisation — including within the labour and trade union movement.

I also believe that this should not be cherry-picked so that when we talk of diversity we do not just mean one narrow group — for example, white women or black men.

The aim must be to create real possibilities for every group to be able to reach the upper echelons.

But I don’t think we should ever equate diversity with automatically being about fundamental change. Other than to allow exploited groups to see that it is possible to “get on” in their chosen field — certainly no bad thing — politics and class interests will still be central.

It is undeniable that it will be a major milestone for diversity to see Harris elected as president of the US. And given her Republican opponent, I hope she does. But we should not be fooled into thinking that she will be there to do anything other than to protect and extend the interests of US monopoly capital.

I hope that I am wrong but I doubt she will take a very different line to the Biden administration on the illegal Cuban blockade and the unilateral designation of the socialist nation as a so-called “state sponsor of terrorism.” After all, she has been part of the administration during the Biden term of office.

I am certain that there will be no difference in US support for the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

But also on the domestic front, I doubt that the deepening levels of poverty and homelessness in the US will get tackled simply because the country’s chief executive is a woman of colour.

I am simply arguing that we need to look beyond simple notions of diversity and believing that it is anything more than “good to see” in a symbolic sense.

We have to have a clear understanding of the way that power actually works in a capitalist society and work out ways of dismantling that system if we really want to bring about real change.

I am all for diversity — but not just for the sake of it.