Obama’s Diverse Team of Dudes
Al Kamen takes a look at Barack Obama’s early appointments and concludes “Thirty-eight of the 56 appointees (68 percent) are men, (But white men, representing 46 percent of all picks, fall short of a majority.)” Kay Steiger remarks that “if you were expecting Obama to be a shining beacon of diversity in the upper tiers of the government’s elite, you are bound to be disappointed.”
In racial terms, though, Obama’s team actually is quite diverse. It’s 70 percent non-Hispanic white in a country that’s 68 percent non-Hispanic white. When you consider that whites represent a disproportionately large share of the “middle aged and college educated” sub-cohort that gets consideration for high-level executive branch jobs, Anglo whites are probably somewhat underrepresented, reflecting the extent to which the Democratic Party is largely composed of ethnic minorities. And, obviously, the President himself is African-American. It’s in terms of appointing women that there’s a clearer case to be made that Obama’s falling short. The basic demographics of the Democratic Party point toward an administration that’s mostly women. But of course most Democratic members of congress are men. Same with the senators and the governors and the former Clinton administration officials. So it’s natural to see the cycle re-inscribed in the Obama administration. But structurally, the relative paucity of women in important public positions is both unfair and a substantial drag on the progressive talent pool. The need to recruit people with experience means that it’s not possible to expect a sudden leap to equality, but it is reasonable to hope for steady improvement. At this point I’d say too few people have really been appointed to say how Obama fares on that score, but he ought to be aspiring to have the most equal split ever.
56 Responses to “Obama’s Diverse Team of Dudes”
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February 17th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
As a woman, I don’t find this kind of assessment useful. I think Obama’s top priority should be finding the best people for positions, not worrying about how many are women. He should prioritize choosing people who are ethical and don’t have conflicts of interest – I’m far more concerned about him appointing a defense industry lobbyist as Deputy SecDef than I am about lack of gender diversity.
There is no such thing as two people who are precisely equally qualified for a job. People always have different experiences that will allow them to contribute different things. When choosing between multiple qualified
people, these considerations should come first.
The basic demographics of the Democratic Party point toward an administration that’s mostly women.
That statement seems simply ridiculous. On that logic, “the basic demographics of the Republican Party” indicate Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice should never have been appointed, because black people don’t vote Republican. Treating appointments as just a way to reward the demographics who voted for you is irresponsible, and I would be very disappointed if I felt that was Obama’s motivation in his choices. I think, by and large, he’s chosen people regardless of ethnicity or gender; the problems I have with his appointments are unrelated to those considerations.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
This post is insultingly easy to make fun of. Really: ending on “equal”? The jokes practically write themselves.
MattY is going to have to work harder if he wants us to discuss the moral bankruptcy of such racist policies.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Let’s put a woman in charge of HHS. And Commerce. They do exist.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
What Katherine said.
Signing the Ledbetter Act and overturning the global gag rule are nothing to sneeze at.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Katherine is absolutely right – there is no such thing as equal qualifications for a job.
Remember – W’s cabinet was one of the most diverse in history, and it didn’t help much in generating policy or politics that benefited the minorities represented.
FDR’s was all white males – liberals need to take a big step back on issues like this and look at the result, not the symbolism.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Katherine,
The basis of affirmative action is not to appoint a gender of ehtnicity regardless of other qualifications–it is to widen the pool of those considered such that it is possible to appoint a woman, person of color, or ethnic or religious minority without sacrificing quality. There are good and very important reasons to present a diverse face to the world, and that is certainly one consideration in Obama’s cabinet that might be less important in, say, a mid-sized tennis ball company.
He should prioritize choosing people who are ethical and don’t have conflicts of interest
Certainly, and no one has suggested otherwise, particularly in this post.
People always have different experiences that will allow them to contribute different things. When choosing between multiple qualified people, these considerations should come first.
Experiences such as, perhaps, being female? A mother? Having experienced racial prejudice firsthand? Speaking fluent Spanish, Hebrew, or Arabic? Those all sound like “different experiences that will allow them to contribute different things.” Bravo, Katherine. You’ve hit the nail on the head and you don’t even know it.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
It’s funny how the Larry Summers’ Brouhaha of 2005 has disappeared down the memory hole now that The One has anointed Larry Grand Poobah of the Economy. Summers’ cognitive dissidence is too much cognitive dissonance for Obama fans to deal with so they’re just trying to not remember it.
I don’t see much evidence at all in “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” that Obama is impressed with white feminists, as Larry’s appointment suggests.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Results are important: True.
Symbolism is important too: True.
You can have both.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
FDR’s cabinet was NOT all white males!
Francis Perkins was the first female cabinet secretary in U.S history. Granted, she was white, but still…
February 17th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I think it’s pretty cool that we haven’t seen a white male in the most prominent presidentially-appointed position of all (Secretary of State) since 1997, four secretaries ago.
Let’s put a woman in charge of HHS. And Commerce. They do exist.
This is an excellent suggestion. The tension between having appropriate demographic representation and having the best-qualified people in office is obviously easier to resolve with the offices that require the least expertise to hold them. Commerce is a perfect example, and to some extent HHS as well.
On the other hand, there’s a reason every Treasury secretary and Fed chair in history have been white males.
February 17th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Who’s the dude with the cowboy hat? Salazar?
February 17th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
On the other hand, there’s a reason every Treasury secretary and Fed chair in history have been white males.
Oh, ‘right’, you can unchain your mail-order bride at weekends.
February 17th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Are you counting that scion of Spanish colonizers pictured above as “Hispanic”?
February 17th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I find these kinds of arguments so embaressing to me as a woman.
Cabinet posts should go to the most qualified, experienced people available. Period. Right now, thats going to bias towards white males, who in the age cohort of Cabinet secretaries have greater educational and professional attainment than women or minorities. Its not a conspiracy, and it will change.
The Cabinet appointment we’ve had so far that was clearly based on demographic apportionment (Richardson) didn’t turn out so well.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I’ve lived in Colorado forever and I like Ken Salazar, despite his unfortunate “centrist” bent. He’s basically a decent guy with a good heart and a good mind.
But, dammit. In all the years I’ve been out here and seen him on the tube and in the papers and been near him live and in person, I have never seen him wear a string tie and a cowboy hat.
Not one single time. He only wears that stuff when making appearances in Washington.
All I can do is shake my head and laugh.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Fred says: Are you counting that scion of Spanish colonizers pictured above as “Hispanic”?
Actually, I’ve heard some people say he’s pure blood, but others say that, due to five hundred years of history, he must have some indigenous blood in him and is thus able to fully speak for Latinos. The only way to settle this issue is to finally pass H. 4729, the bill that would mandate a full DNA workout for all cabinet and upper level appointees. Please write MattY and CAP and urge them to put their full intellectual heft behind that bill.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
When all the undersecretary jobs are filled it would be worth comparing that sample to the results of the Cabinet as a whole. President Obama can’t pick from a bench of candidates that doesn’t exist but he can build a bench for the later in his term or for the next President.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
24Ahead, Steve Sailer, and Fred.
A triumvirate of cunts.
Big fat dumb white ones.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
i’m sorry, so if FIVE of his appointees that were men had been women instead, then he would be a beacon of equality? Please.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
i’m sorry, so if FIVE of his appointees that were men had been women instead, then he would be a beacon of equality? Please.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Hispanic means having heritage from Spain, and that is what Ken Salazar has in addition to the high probability of being mestizo as well. He says that his family comes from the Santa Fe area (no shortage of Natives in New Mexico). This all shows me that most Americans don’t know much about how the southwest was settled and how most of the land once upon a time belonged to Mexico.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I don’t expect Obama to right every wrong.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
How many of them know that their kid’s summer camp doesn’t count as a child care deduction? Or know but pretend otherwise?
February 17th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
but he ought to be aspiring to have the most equal split ever.
What a joke.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Very silly, Matt, but not for the reasons people have given (I thought someone would beat me to this, but evidently not.)
If you look at the current gender composition of the House and Senate, Obama’s doing well:
75 women in the House out of 435 = 17.2%
17 women in the Senate out of 100 = 17%
Gender composition of Obama’s appointments so far: 32% female
(Sources: http://www.thisnation.com/congress-facts.html, and Matt’s post)
Elected posts in state government, whether state-wide (governor, secretary of state, attorney general, etc.) or state legislature, tend to run around 25% female. He’s STILL doing better than that.
His appointments are way, way ahead of the yardstick–national-level elected office–that also happens to be a significant recruitment pool, and even ahead of another yardstick that isn’t so much a recruitment pool. I haven’t compared his appointments to Bush’s staffing, or Clinton’s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s ahead of them both. Also, he’s filled his top appointments first. Do you really think he’ll suddenly appoint MORE men to LOWER level jobs?
February 17th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Deep down, Obama appears to hold feminists in contempt. Look at the enormous contrast between how Bill Clinton presented his Yale Law School wife in 1992 as a virtual co-President (”two for the price of one”) and how Barack Obama presented his Harvard Law School wife who gets paid $317k per year as a soccer mom.
In truth, both wives’ careers were crucial to building the Clinton and Obama political brands in their states, but Obama wants you to forget all about that, even if it makes Michelle’s $317k look like an outright bribe by Big Medicine to a U.S. Senator.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
and you hold feminists in the same regard as gays, transgenders, latinos and blacks, you mendacious cunt.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Are you counting that scion of Spanish colonizers pictured above as “Hispanic”?
Basically all Hispanics are scions of Spanish colonizers. What else do you think they are — Native Americans?
February 17th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
In all the years I’ve been out here and seen him on the tube and in the papers and been near him live and in person, I have never seen him wear a string tie and a cowboy hat.
Not one single time. He only wears that stuff when making appearances in Washington.
In fairness, without the hat Salazar looks disturbingly like Phil Gramm. I can’t really blame him for trying to avoid that fate.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Obama comes from a family, the Paynes, of high-achieving, glass ceiling-breaking women: his maternal grandmother was one of the first two female bank executives in Hawaii and his great-aunt (his grandmother’s sister) is a retired professor of statistics in North Carolina. (I presume she also racked up a number of feminist firsts in her academic career in postwar America.)
None of these female accomplishments made much of an impression at all on Obama, to judge from his memoir.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
For the Obama who wrote “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” white feminists are just janie-come-latelies trying to horn in on the glory due to the real victims.
Thus, in his famous March 17 race speech, Obama threw his living grandma under the bus to make Rev. Wright look better:
“I can no more disown [Rev. Dr. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
A careful look at this incident as Obama described it on pp. 88-91 of Dreams from My Father shows a very different picture. Obama’s white grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, who was raising him and earning most of the money in the family while his own mother was off in Indonesia working on her 1067 page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing, rode the bus each morning to her job as a bank executive. One day, the 16-18 year old Obama wakes up to an argument between his grandmother and grandfather. She didn’t want to ride the bus because she had been hassled by a bum at the bus stop. She tells him:
“Her lips pursed with irritation. ‘He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn’t come, I think he might have hit me over the head.’”
So why didn’t Obama’s lefty grandfather want to drive his own wife to work? Because to help his wife avoid the hostile, dangerous panhandler would be morally wrong, because the potential mugger was … Well, I’ll let Sen. Obama tell the story:
“He turned around and I saw that he was shaking. ‘It is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me. She’s been bothered by men before. You know why she’s so scared this time. I’ll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black.’ He whispered the word. ‘That’s the real reason why she’s bothered. And I just don’t think that right.’
“The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. In my steadiest voice, I told him that such an attitude bothered me, too, but reassured him that Toot’s fears would pass and that we should give her a ride in the meantime. Gramps slumped into a chair in the living room and said he was sorry he had told me. Before my eyes, he grew small and old and very sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that it was all right, I understood.
“We remained like that for several minutes, in painful silence. Finally he insisted that he drive Toot after all, and I thought about my grandparents. They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would. And yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fear.”
Then Obama drives over for counseling to the house of his grandfather’s friend Frank, an old black Communist Party USA member, who tells him:
“What I’m trying to tell you is, your grandma’s right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That’s just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it’s not. So you might as well get used to it.”
“Frank closed his eyes. His breathing slowed until he seemed to be asleep. I thought about waking him, then decided against it and walked back to the car. The earth shook under my feet, ready to crack open at any moment. I stopped, trying to steady myself, and knew for the first time that I was utterly alone.”
Man, what a family full of drama queens! And now Obama is equating his own grandma, who was the main breadwinner in this dysfunctional family circus (and who is still alive, living in the Honolulu highrise where this scene took place), with Rev. Dr. God Damn America.
Classy.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
(and who is still alive, living in the Honolulu highrise where this scene took place)
Steve, Madelyn Dunham died the day before the 2008 election. This wasn’t exactly obscure news, as Obama flew to Hawaii the week before the election to visit her a last time. This after he “threw her under the bus” – and c’mon man, you’re too interesting a writer to lean on that silly cliche.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Dave:
The story is all about a bus stop, so it fits.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Steve Sailer, champion of the feminists. What a shitstain.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
“Hispanic means having heritage from Spain”
Not in the context in which it’s used in terms of political appointments, where the goal is to appoint someone from an “oppressed” or “non-white” group (unless that someone is a woman, in which case she can be white and still qualify). For example, if David Trueba emigrated here, he wouldn’t qualify for any ‘Queen for a Day’ points for being “Hispanic”.
“He says that his family comes from the Santa Fe area (no shortage of Natives in New Mexico).”
There was no shortage of Natives in New England a few hundred years ago either. That doesn’t mean that most Boston Brahmin families have Indian blood.
“Basically all Hispanics are scions of Spanish colonizers. What else do you think they are — Native Americans?”
A lot of them actually are of almost all Indian blood; others have a mixture of black and Indian blood with a soupcon of white blood, but very few “Hispanics” can actually trace their heritage back 500 years to Spain. Salazar can. He is the Spanish male equivalent of a Daughter of the American Revolution.
February 18th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Gee, a mixed-race family suffering from mixed feelings.
Much drama-queenness in publishing this excerpt to “prove” that Obama doesn’t respect women.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:02 am
When I meet a Mexican with red hair, fair skin, and green eyes, I think “Spanish”.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:46 am
To anyone else who thinks 58 appointments sounded pretty low, so if you read the article you will notice that MY left out a key qualifier. “But a review of the early demographic data of Obama’s first 56 selections for Senate-confirmed top jobs in the departments and agencies”
Oh and as for Lord Yglesias last claim:
It would be nice if he pointed out the only comparative data that is given, data which destroys the whole premise behind the title of Kamen’s article and Yglesias’ analysis:
February 18th, 2009 at 7:17 am
As Matt says, reaching quickly for gender parity in the administration is impracticable: most of the capable finance policy people, say, are for now white men. Not so for the zombie banks queing up for bailouts. As a condition for taxpayer rescue, I propose insisting that half the boards be women.
There’s no downside risk here: the promoted women second-tier managers can’t possibly be worse than the aggressive, reckless, macho men they replace, and are likely to be more risk-averse and farsighted. The typically female vices they may bring to the table – say spite, duplicity, vindictiveness, and possessiveness – don’t create a parallel systemic risk. The banking system needs a brutal cultural shock; nibbling at bonuses doesn’t hack it. This might. (First blogged by me here.)
February 18th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Barack fears the Va Jay Jay
February 18th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Steve Sailer,
You might not like Rev. Wright’s rhetoric, but it’s hard to argue with the truth of what he said. “Drama queen” indeed.
February 18th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I’m sorry, Steve, but could you point out the part of the big excerpt you posted that makes the point you think it was making?
February 18th, 2009 at 10:25 am
At this point I’d say too few people have really been appointed to say how Obama fares on that score, but he ought to be aspiring to have the most equal split ever.
Going by the article you linked to, he has a higher proportion of women in his early appointments than W or Clinton. There’s no data on decades-old Republican administrations before that, but do you really think they had more than 1/3 women?
IOW, he already *does* have the most equal split ever.
Look at the enormous contrast between how Bill Clinton presented his Yale Law School wife in 1992 as a virtual co-President (”two for the price of one”) and how Barack Obama presented his Harvard Law School wife who gets paid $317k per year as a soccer mom.
Of course, the fact that Hillary Clinton was crucified six ways from Sunday by Republicans and the media, and to this day has some of the highest negatives of any unindicted politician, couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the Obamas’ (note plural – how exactly would Barack Obama have presented his wife as something she didn’t want to present herself as, even if he had wanted to?) decision to take a different approach.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:32 am
“Basically all Hispanics are scions of Spanish colonizers. What else do you think they are — Native Americans?”
Well, yes, actually, they are. Here in DC you can see people on the street who look like this: http://www.gbarkman.com/morgan/images/mayan350.jpg
February 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Re: “Basically all Hispanics are scions of Spanish colonizers. What else do you think they are — Native Americans?”
Actually, only in a few regions (Costa Rica, the Southern Cone, and southern Brazil) is the majority of the population of European descent. Most Mexicans or Central Americans have some indigenous blood, and most people from the Spanish Caribbean have some African blood.
February 18th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
There’s a good chance there’s a drop or two of Spanish in them. They are probably descended from the Irish deserters during the Mexican American war. They obviously didn’t bring Irish women with them. After 160 years of intermarrying without any particular reason to have criollo or indiginous people as favored mates, they almost certainly have a lot of both in their ancestry.
Or, if you like distant foggy legeds, the Irish are descended from Mil Espaine, and therefore all Irish are hispanic.
February 18th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Njorl,
Spain, as a European country, has plenty of more-or-less Nordic-looking people. Just because it was occupied by North African Arabs for a few centuries doesn’t mean everyone there is swarthy.
February 18th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Fred says:
A lot of Hispanics (Mestizos) from the New World can trace their heritage to Spain, assuming they have Spanish names and a lineage of baptism in the Catholic church. I have seen it with friends from Ecuador, Mexico, etc. A lot of Hispanics from where Ken Salazar is from (Southern Colorado) have Native heritage too. Being Native was not something that they were proud of, as it was tied to a whole caste system of oppression. I would be willing to bet, and this is because I know something about the region, that Ken Salazar is not a pure Spaniard. That particular area of Colorado also has a lot of Hispanics with Jewish lineage as well (converted, as they were expelled from Spain). I don’t think the DAR comparison is accurate.
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