Friday, December 16, 2016

Trump's cabinet to be "pale male" after all

A few days ago, I suggested that Trump's choices for his cabinet and other high positions showed a degree of diversity that was better than I had expected.  Since then he has named a couple more white men.   And it turns out that, when you look just at the cabinet itself, much of the diversity goes away.   They're in non-cabinet positions.

There are 15 cabinet positions.   Two have not yet been filled (Agriculture and Veterans Affairs).   Of the 13 cabinet nominees thus far, 10 are white men.   In addition there is one African-American man (Ben Carson at HUD) and two are women, one white (Betsy DeVos at Education) and one Asian-American (Elaine Chao at Transportation).

In my previous diversity count, I had included the non-cabinet positions of three other women:   Linda McMahon, head of the Small Business Association, who is white;  plus Nikki Haley as U.N. Ambassador and Seema Verma to head Medicare and Medicaid Services (both Indian-American women).  It's notable that none of his appointments in either sphere so far are Hispanic.

Ralph

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