Yet Again, The White House Interns Are Overwhelmingly White
Vice President Mike Pence tweeted Wednesday that he had met with the summer 2017 White House interns. The official Snapchat account for the White House also shared a few photographs from the day.
But there was something particularly jarring about the pictures ...
Appreciate the hard work our @WhiteHouse interns are doing this summer. Enjoyed providing some advice & insight - they have bright futures! pic.twitter.com/juq7lOzVYV
— Vice President Pence (@VP) July 26, 2017
As many Twitter users noted, there are very few people of color in all the photographs. The majority of the interns are white.
Omg all but 1 of the @WhiteHouse interns are white. pic.twitter.com/kXZH2EwXui
— Emily (@em_rochefort) July 26, 2017
This year’s intern class, predominantly white and male, was first put on display earlier this week when President Donald Trump posed with them for a photo op Monday, leading the Twittersphere to comment on the overwhelming amount of white faces:
America:
•38% People of Color
•31% White Women
•31% White Men
White House Interns:
•2% POC
•25% WW
•73% WM
This's what "#MAGA" looks like pic.twitter.com/Q2YEddtB4I— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) July 25, 2017
Trump posed with the White House interns today. I'm blinded by the diversity. pic.twitter.com/Y9WsBETKF3
— Greg Hogben (@MyDaughtersArmy) July 24, 2017
Trump's White House interns did their team photo today. A quick analysis:
Total interns: 115
Men: 81
Women: 34
Black men: 2
Black women: 0 pic.twitter.com/TZH99hoYgP— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) July 25, 2017
The lack of diversity among the White House interns has been a topic of discussion for quite a while. Last July, there was backlash after House Speaker Paul Ryan posted a selfie on Instagram with the Capitol Hill interns, who were also mostly white.
A post shared by Speaker Paul Ryan (@speakerryan) on Jul 16, 2016 at 11:12am PDT
Ryan’s photo stood in stark contrast to a follow-up picture taken by a group of Democratic House interns and interns from the Congressional Black Caucus.
Their photograph was far more representative of the country’s diversity:
A post shared by Rep. Terri Sewell (@repterriasewell) on Jul 19, 2016 at 2:43pm PDT
According to The Washington Post, women are more than half of the U.S. population and “as of 2015, 44 percent of all people ages 18-34 are minorities.”
Those being groomed as the future of our government should look like our country. And they don’t.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.