Donald Trump’s cabinet will be the first in 30 years without a Latino, even as Latinos are the largest minority in the United States. Trump's cabinet is occupied by white males Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Minuchin.
This is the least diverse cabinet in a while. The diversity of the president’s cabinet was at the highest during the Obama administration. During Obama’s administration, appointees included an African-American male and a white woman as top appointees (You may know her as Hillary Clinton).
When confronted about what some see as a lack of diversity in Trump’s cabinet, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that the Presidential Cabinet not having a Latino candidate for the first time in 30 years is a narrow way of looking at things.
Spicer said, “The No.1 thing that I think Americans should focus on is ‘Is he hiring the best and the brightest? Is he hiring people that are committed to enacting real change?”
There is some diversity in Trump’s cabinet, but not in the top posts. The Secretary of Transportation is Elaine Chao from Taiwan and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is neuroscientist Ben Carson.
Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina and an Indian-American woman, has also been appointed to Trump’s cabinet. She also serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
Trump is not known for loving all kinds of people. With his plan to build a wall around Mexico and his irritating rhetoric towards Muslims, one would venture to think that his cabinet would lack diversity. However, that there is an Indian- American woman and a woman from Taiwan on his cabinet to me are facts that show he isn’t trying to only have white people on his cabinet.
However, you could argue that maybe he isn’t hiring the best people and there is little diversity in the opinions. This can be seen by his having appointed a climate change specialist who denies climate change and by his choice of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.
What do you think of the President’s new cabinet—is it diverse, or not? What do you think of the individuals he chose as his cabinet members and their policies?
