“Look at my staff,” Joe Biden said back in December.
The subject of diversity had come up in an NPR interview: Only white candidates had qualified for the next Democratic debate, one of the last before the start of the primary, and the reporter asked if Biden would commit to selecting a person of color as his running mate. Aboard his campaign bus in Iowa, the 77-year-old candidate looked equal parts frustrated by the question and confident in his answer.
“I have the most diverse staff of anybody running. I've always done that.”
Biden’s campaign refused to give any detail about the claim after he made it. And more than six months later, he has yet to back up the assertion or provide any data on the diversity of his campaign staff — marking a significant break during a national reckoning over racism and issues of inclusion and equity with the standard of transparency set by Democratic candidates during the last presidential election.
Biden’s presidential campaign, staffed at the top by a predominantly white team of advisers, declined this week to disclose the number of people of color on payroll or detail the way in which they track diversity data internally. In response to questions from BuzzFeed News about hiring and inclusion practices, the Biden campaign pointed to the creation of a diversity and culture committee and its employment of a chief people, diversity, and inclusion officer. Michael Leach, a former NFL labor relations official serving in that role, has worked for Biden for a year, but the campaign did not externally announce his job prior to the publication of this story.
Campaign officials did not explain why they have yet to share diversity numbers publicly but indicated they expect to do so soon.
Jamal Brown, the Biden campaign’s national press secretary, said in an emailed statement that the campaign “reflects the diversity, breadth and promise of America” and that it has “placed a premium on fostering an inclusive culture and workforce representative of all backgrounds, beliefs, and socioeconomic groups.”
read more here: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/joe-biden-2020-campaign-staff-diversity
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