Don picks are educaSHUNal

On Tuesday night, Ta-Nehisi Coates made a guest appearance with Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show” to discuss “My President Was Black” — his brilliant reflection on the Obama presidency. On Wednesday, The Daily Show posted a memed quote from Coates that has been liked more than 232,000 times.

It says this:

If I have to jump six feet to get the same thing that you have to jump two feet for — that’s how racism works.

To be President, Obama had to be scholarly, intelligent, President of the Harvard Law Review, the product of some of our greatest educational institutions, capable of talking to two different worlds.

Donald Trump had to be rich and white. That’s the difference.

And immediately, it got me curious to find out what the education level of the incoming Trump administration is compared to the Obama administration. What I found is stark and deeply revealing. In fact, the most educated man in the Trump administration is the lone black man — Dr. Ben Carson.

It starts from the top down. Donald Trump will be the first President of the United States in 25 years to not have a graduate degree of any kind.

Obama’s current secretary of education, John King Jr., has a B.A. from Harvard, a master’s degree and doctorate from Columbia, and a law degree from Yale on top of it all. He is one of the most educated people to ever hold the position of secretary of education. That makes sense right?

The incoming secretary of education is Betsy DeVos. She has a bachelor’s degree from Calvin College. That’s it. She’s also white and a billionaire. Not a single black man in America would ever be under the impression that he could be secretary of education with a B.A. from Calvin College.

Perhaps no contrast is more stark than the difference between who President Obama has appointed as secretary of energy versus who Trump has appointed. Obama’s first secretary of energy was Steven Chu — a Nobel Prize winning physicist. He was succeeded by Ernest Moniz - who earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University.

Trump just appointed Rick Perry - who failed his college chemistry course and had a transcript riddled with Cs & Ds. The former governor of Texas struggled his way into earning a bachelor’s degree in animal science from Texas A&M.

The current secretary of the treasury is Jack Lew. Lew has a B.A. from Harvard and a law degree from Georgetown. Trump nominated Steven Mnuchin. He doesn’t have a graduate degree of any kind.

Education matters. It is often on college campuses where people are challenged with new ideas, new cultures and opposing viewpoints that don't quite match their own.

To see the education levels drop off so much, is not just disappointing, it could be dangerous.