Trump White House Staff: A Whiter Shade of Pale

White House staff diversity, already low, is decreasing:

“Of the 55 highest-earning White House staffers, POLITICO was able to identify only a half-dozen who are not white. Along with [director of strategic communications Mercedes] Schlapp, that includes director of management and administration Marcia Lee Kelly, who is Korean-American, and Joyce Meyer, a Filipino-American who is a senior member of the legislative affairs team.”

“’Having diversity in a leadership team is clearly necessary for top performance,’ said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that advised the Trump transition team as it set up the government. ‘The proverbial group think, which is a real problem, becomes less of one when you have a diverse team.’

He added: ‘It’s not something that’s going to get better by accident. It’s something that gets better when people at the top prioritize it’.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Friday about the diversity of its staff.”

— “Trump’s inner circle gets whiter,” Andrew Restuccia, Politico

More:

“Trump has so few senior black advisers, Kellyanne Conway struggles to name one,” Emily Stewart, Vox

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New Body Shapes for Barbie

The multinational Mattel corporation has announced three new body shapes for its Barbie doll. Soon petite, tall, and curvy dolls will join the anatomically non viable classic Barbies scattered across the floors of girls around the globe. Given the “fashionista” variations in skin tones and hair texture, there will now be 33 types of Barbies, as varied as the young women playing with them.

But what about Hijab Barbie? And Lego just issued a minfigure in a wheelchair. Just sayin’.

Football Team Sends University of Missouri President to the Showers

In 1839, 176 years ago, the slave state of Missouri founded a university at Columbia, the first public institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi. In 1950, 65 years ago, the University of Missouri at Columbia admitted its first black student. Columbia is about 100 miles from Ferguson, so it is unsurprising that recent racial incidents on campus were of concern to many students and faculty members, especial if they are African American. What was surprising: Inaction on the part of University President Tim Wolfe.

Campus protests, begun in September, were met with administration lip-service. Last week a UM grad student went on a hunger strike. Nothing. On Saturday the University’s football team announced it wouldn’t practice or play for the rest of the season unless University President Wolfe resigned. On Monday morning he did.

The Mizzou Tigers play the BYU Cougars on Saturday, November 14th , 6:30 PM CST at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

The University of Missouri motto: Salus populi suprema lex esto, “Let the Welfare of the People be the Supreme Law.” Seems like it takes a concerned Southeastern Conference team of enforcers, though.

Supreme Court: Love Wins, 5 to 4.

On Friday the Supreme Court of the United States announced its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. The majority (Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan) held that the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment guarantee marriage equality for same-sex couples in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of the United States. The USA is now one of 21 countries with nationwide marriage equality.

Enjoy It While It Lasts, White Folks ….

This week’s Saturday Night Live included a “public service announcement” (above) reminding white people that they won’t be in the majority for long, so they better enjoy the “final few years of white dominance” while they can.

On a less humorous note:

“Soon to become a minority in the US, whites express declining support for diversity, psychology study finds,” Stuart Wolpert, Phys.org

“Whites think discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than bias against blacks,” Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post

1963 March on Washington: 80,000 Cheese Sandwiches

“In New York, volunteers showed up at the Riverside Church at 3:00 AM to make bagged lunches. The bagged meal, comprised of a cheese sandwich, mustard, marble cake and an apple, could be purchased by marchers for 50 cents. Working in shifts until 4 in the afternoon, the assembly line crew paused once for a few words from Dr. Robert Spike, director of the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches: ‘As an act of love, we now dedicate these lunches for the nourishment of thousands who will be coming long distances, at great sacrifice to say with their bodies and souls that we shall overcome.’ In all, 5 tons of American cheese went into the 80,000 lunches that were loaded onto refrigerated trucks and shipped down to Washington.”

— “Eating on the March: Food at the 1963 March on Washington,” Smithsonian Magazine blog [links added]

What’s Black and White and . . . Mostly White and Male?

“The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) recently released its annual study of newsroom diversity. The results only confirmed what many who have lived through the industry’s deep recession have already experienced: a steady decline in minority journalists and stagnation in prior progress. Despite claims by news organizations that they value and promote diversity, the numbers in this year’s study show 90 percent of newsroom supervisors from participating news organizations were white.”

— “Newsroom Diversity: A Casualty of Journalism’s Financial Crisis,” Riva Gold, The Atlantic

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