Senate, the worst employer for racial diversity
Black historian and author Lawrence Otis Graham says US Senate displays some of the same racist attitudes it displayed a century ago. His new book, “The Senator and The Socialite” (HarperCollins), surveys the internal racial hiring practices of the US Senate offices, which he thinks is pathetically below mark.
Graham says, “It is outrageous enough that this nation will only elect one black person to the U.S. Senate, but it is a true disgrace that the Senators, themselves, are unwilling to hire blacks and other minorities to run or assist in their offices.” He cites a study which shows that 94% of the Senate employees are white and not a single one of the 100 Senators has a black person in a chief of staff leadership post.
In a press release today, Graham says, “Nothing has changed on the Senate side of the Capitol building since 1874 when Senator Blanche Bruce became the first black elected to a full Senate term. There was 1 black in the Senate then, and there's still only 1 black there today. And none of the Senators seem to really care about that level of racial exclusion.”
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