Bad signal
A Latino should be reflected in Trump’s Cabinet.
If you judge a man by the company he keeps, what President Trump’s proposed Cabinet says about him is mighty discouraging.
His education secretary is devoted to pretty much destroying public education, his housing secretary has no experience in housing policy and his treasury secretary’s key qualification seems to be that he led the fundraising effort for the president’s campaign. But beneath the thin and questionable pile of resumes lies the stark fact that Trump’s Cabinet will be the least diverse of any president in more than three decades. And most striking of all, it includes not a single Latino.
That’s right. Our nation’s fastest-growing group of citizens, roughly 17 percent of the American people, will not be represented in Trump’s Cabinet.
Leave it to the president who launched his campaign by condemning Mexicans as rapists to form a Cabinet that excludes Hispanics. Every president in the last three decades has given Latinos a seat at that table, but not the Trump administration.
President Ronald Reagan appointed the first Latino Cabinet member, Lauro Cavazos, as secretary of education. All told, a dozen Latinos have served in the Cabinet, including the highest-ranking of them all, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, appointed by President George W. Bush.
And it’s especially galling given how the president’s spokesman responded when questioned about this lack of diversity. “The number one thing that I think Americans should focus on is, is he hiring the best and the brightest” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
So it would seem the new president doesn’t think any of this nation’s more than 57 million Hispanic citizens are among the nation’s best and brightest. If Trump couldn’t find a single Cabinet nominee among that many people, he wasn’t looking hard enough.
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, given anti-immigrant rhetoric flooding Trump’s campaign. He didn’t need Hispanic votes to win the presidency, so perhaps he thinks he doesn’t need to make any overtures to Hispanic voters.
But reaching out to the political opposition is a long and honorable tradition for newly elected presidents, and it’s an especially important exercise in national unity after such a divisive campaign.
In a representative democracy it’s crucial that diverse population groups be represented at the top levels of government. Spicer indicated the new president may appoint some Hispanics to other high-ranking positions in his administration. Let’s hope so. Considering how much Trump talked about border issues during his campaign, he needs to broaden his circle of advisers to reflect the nation’s growing Latino population.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:58