Shaun King, one of the most prominent online voices in the Black Lives Matter movement, had an epiphany this week in his latest New York Daily News column. Namely, he realized that the Democratic Party is full of hypocrisy when it comes to racial diversity.
Lamenting the end of President Obama’s tenure in office, King writes:
President Obama has actually done a pretty good job as President at hiring a truly diverse staff. From cabinet positions all the way down to interns, he has attempted to build a team that looks like America. Unfortunately, he has less than two months left in office and most of that diversity will be flushed down the toilet. His impending absence reveals the painful truth that the Democratic Party has been using his administration as cover for their own lack of effort, from the top down, at building genuine diversity in our government.
King, in conversations with a “respected staffer” in the U.S. Senate, realized something else. Senate Democrats weren’t overwhelmingly white due to lack of effort on the party’s part or demographic factors beyond control; according to the staffer, the Senate looks exactly the way the white senators want it to look.
“Democrats in the Senate use demographics as their excuse for the fact that they only have one African-American member in their ranks,” the staffer told King. “They’ll tell anyone who listens that they wish this wasn’t the case and to the untrained ear, it sounds true. It isn’t. The Senate looks just the way want it.”
The staffer “proved” this to King by showing him that of all the Senators in the upper chamber, only one – Tim Scott (a Republican!) – employed a black Chief of Staff.
“The lone black chief of staff in the entire United States Senate works for South Carolina Republican, Tim Scott. His office may be the most diverse in the entire Senate,” the staffer told King, who said the news hit him like “a punch to the gut.”
Noting all of the pandering Democrats do when they want to drum up the African American vote – bringing out the Beyonces and appearing on the Steve Harvey shows – King said the hypocrisy was astounding.
“How much do Senate Democrats truly value black folk if they don’t have a single black chief of staff? How much do Senate Democrats honestly and earnestly value African-Americans if less than 1% of their senior staff members are black?” he asked. “Yeah, Donald Trump’s a bigot, but Senate Democrats aren’t far behind.”
Be careful, Mr. King. Too much more of that kind of thinking and you might realize that racial diversity quotas – whether legal or unwritten – are just as much of a scam as Democratic Party pandering. And then what will you write about?
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