Seal of the United States Department of State

By Gary  Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

The U.S. Department of State has created a new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) position at Foggy Bottom.  Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who announced the CDIO position on Wednesday, said  the Department has the honor of representing the American people to the world. “To do that well, we must recruit and retain a workforce that truly reflects America,” he said.  The U.S. Foreign Service definitely remained  overwhelmingly “pale, male, and Yale” under four years of former president Trump’s administration.   “The country can no longer afford a State Department that is pale, male, and Yale,”  Karen Bass wrote in a Dec. 5  2020  article in Foreign Policy.  Last October, the State Department halted  diversity training after President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to end the “divisive” programs.  Blinken said with the new CDIO position,  the  goal is to incorporate diversity and inclusion into the Department’s work at every level.  The CDIO position will report directly to Blinken to assure accountability and results. 

“Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative. And our diversity gives us a significant competitive advantage on the world stage. This is something that the President, the Vice President, and I firmly believe. If we get this right — and I’m committed to see to it that we do — our efforts now will lay the foundation for a more diverse and inclusive State Department for years to come.”

-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken (credit: Department of State)

However,  the lack of diversity in the Foreign Service was there long before President Trump took office.  Between 2002 and 2018, the proportion of State Department staff identifying as racial or ethnic minorities increased by only 4 percent, well below the federal workforce average. The proportion of Black employees actually fell.  

‘Building a diverse and inclusive culture cannot only be a top-down effort. We need bureaus and teams across the department to join in this work and make it their own. So I am also asking each of our bureaus to designate an existing Deputy Assistant Secretary to support that bureau’s own D&I efforts and to serve on a newly created D&I Leadership Council, which will bring senior leaders together from across the State Department to achieve the goals laid out in our soon-to-be-released Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan,”   Secretary  of  State  Blinken said.

On his final day in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proudly proclaimed ‘multiculturalism’ is ‘not who America is’

Credit:  Credit: Gary Raynaldo /  ©Diplomatic Times /  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo  briefs reporters at Department of State headquarters in Washington D.C.  File.

U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo  denounced “multiculturalism” and “woke-ism” in America on his last day as America’s top diplomat via Twitter on Wednesday January 20.   Pompeo’s declaration is highly confusing and nationalistic, given the U.S. is the most diverse, multicultural societies on  the face of the earth.  Did he not notice that America’s new Vice President Kamala Harris exemplifies what this great country is all about. The fact that a woman, who is the child of a Jamaican father and  Indian mother, could strive and live out the American dream and become the second most powerful person in the  world. Folk like Pompeo, Trump et al live in an alternative reality, as it is the year 2021  and not  1876 pre-Civil War America.