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Politico: State Dept. ‘racing to address’ its 232 years of overwhelming and entrenched whiteness

March 17, 2021 | | Print Article

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New reports about the State Department’s activities suggest that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the man whom President Joe Biden appointed to oversee the executive department, is trying to transform it into the Woke Department.

Signs of this switch in focus emerged last month when Blinken issued a statement about “diversity and inclusion” at the department.

In the statement, Blinken announced the creation of a new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer position and unveiled a new “goal” of trying to “incorporate diversity and inclusion into the Department’s work at every level.”

Note that the traditional function of the United States Department of State has always been to execute foreign policy.

“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,” Blinken’s statement continued.

But why this change in focus?

According to a Politico report published Tuesday, Blinken “is racing to address a 232-year-old problem: the overwhelming and entrenched whiteness of the nation’s oldest government agency.”

In a statement to Politico, department spokesperson Jalina Porter vowed that Blinken is “committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion for our workforce.”

“It’s going to be integrated across the department, and it’s going to help strengthen us, period,” she said.

She reportedly cited herself, a black woman, and her boss, Ned Price, who’s openly gay, as examples.

“I want to inspire people to look and think outside the box. I make it a point to show up authentically as myself, rather than fit into societal norms,” she said.

Price, the department’s top spokesperson, issued a statement on Jan. 22nd saluting President Biden for reversing former President Donald Trump’s decision to ban critical race theory-based propaganda from the federal government.

“The Day One White House decision to rescind the previous administration’s Executive Order 13950 affirms the Biden Administration’s unwavering commitment to advancing racial and gender equity and a federal workforce that reflect the talents, abilities, and perspectives of the country they serve,” Price said.

“The nearly 77,000 Department employees at over 275 missions worldwide and offices across the United States can rest assured of their new leadership’s commitment to a more diverse and inclusive workplace that begins with open discussion of challenges faced and shared commitment to advance progress.”

As a result of this new mission, various interest groups have begun lobbying the department with radical proposals to improve so-called diversity.

“For members of minority groups to rise rapidly in large numbers — it will take either a hiring spree, or for more white men (who make up more than half the department’s senior staff) to miss out on recruitment or promotion,” Politico noted.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs nominee Bonnie Jenkins, a black woman, reportedly supports having “a round of diverse mid-career hires to help balance the numbers.”

She’s been working with Obama-era Ambassador Melanne Verveer “to develop diversity recommendations for Blinken,” according to Politico.

The two reportedly wrote in their recommendations that there should be “an unambiguous commitment that by 2030, employees will resemble the country that they represent. Diversity should be a key consideration in all new appointments.”

These reports about the State Department’s new focus come as the military is also going woke, as is essentially every other segment of the federal government.

It’s a disturbing trend that’s drawn heavy criticism from conservatives who believe the government’s various department should stick to their original roles, lest the government turn into a woke parody of itself versus, you know, a government.

The problem with a woke government is that wokeness weakens it. Take the military.

“Our military is designed to deter and to defend, to kill people and break things. If diversity facilitates that mission, that’s wonderful. But to supplant the military’s chief mission with the woke protocols of the political left is to undermine that chief mission,”  conservative commentator Ben Shapiro noted.

Similarly, the purpose of the State Department is to enact foreign policy, not cater to people’s grievances about race, gender, etc.

To be fair, the department has been purposefully trying to recruit black officials since 1963, according to Politico. Yet the efforts have failed.

“Along with my father we have 60 years of family contribution, [but] the representation is worse than when my father retired in 1997,” Irvin Hicks Jr., a second-generation black senior foreign service officer, told the outlet.

The question that nobody seems to want to ask, however, is whether a large number of black people simply aren’t interested in working at the State Department.

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Vivek Saxena
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