If the U.S. Senate gives President Bush the secretary of State and attorney general he wants in Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales, this Republican opponent of affirmative action will have assembled an impressive record of diversity among his top officials.
The first Hispanic attorney general (Gonzales). The first black female secretary of State and first black national security adviser (Rice). The first black secretary of State (Colin Powell). And the first black education secretary (Rod Paige).
So why doesn't Bush get more credit as a champion of ethnic diversity? Maybe because it is tough to gauge exactly what ethnic diversity brings to the Bush administration.
The logic of diversity is simple: When people from diverse backgrounds have access to the levers of power in society, their decisions should be influenced - at least, in part - by insights gleaned from their culture and heritage.
In the past, this brought us Thurgood Marshall, a Supreme Court justice who dismantled institutional racism in America by promoting affirmative action and other policies based on reversing centuries of race-based oppression. Along the way, Marshall championed the idea of protecting the civil rights of any minority from the tyranny of the majority's will, advocating policies that helped women, children, other racial minorities, prisoners and even the media.
But it's tough to know whether the people of color who serve in Bush's Cabinet have made many decisions that reflect similar sensitivities. Some activists have flat-out accused Rice and Paige of acting as "race traitors" - turning their backs on policies that might help less fortunate people of color in their zeal to support their boss.
And nowhere has this issue burned brighter than in the debate about affirmative action.
In the past, both Rice and Paige have echoed Bush's criticism of race-based solutions to diversity issues, maintaining there are better ways to ensure equal access to good schools, higher education and coveted jobs. That put both of them at odds with a majority of black and Hispanic people, who favored affirmative action programs at rates of 70 percent and 63 percent respectively in a 2003 Gallup poll.
When President Bush decided in 2003 that the administration would join a Supreme Court challenge to race-based admissions policies at the University of Michigan, Rice performed a delicate two-step, bolstering her boss but stopping short of condemning the concept of affirmative action completely.
She noted, "while race-neutral measures are preferable, it is appropriate to use race as one factor" in diversifying a student body, if necessary - a concession the administration's actual court filing didn't make.
Gonzales, who has alienated conservatives with moderate support of affirmative action programs in the past, nevertheless worked on the University of Michigan challenge as White House counsel. (He was, however, credited with pushing the White House away from opposing affirmative action altogether). And outgoing Secretary Paige has repeatedly pressed for race-neutral admissions policies in higher education.
It all raises an important question: Does diversity of staffing matter when the people of color mostly do what their white boss tells them to?
Notably, Powell seemed the exception to this rule among Bush's high-profile minority staffers. He expressed open and largely unqualified support for affirmative action during the University of Michigan case and pressed the administration to pay more attention to crises in Africa during his tenure as the nation's top diplomat.
But Powell is now on his way out the door, marginalized by a president who never seemed to value his advice and treasures loyalty above all.
Which leaves supporters of diversity in a serious quandary. Will Bush's high-profile appointees of color sufficiently challenge their boss' worldview? Or will they mostly act as a smokescreen for the president when sticky issues of race emerge?
Folks like Rice and Paige are shining examples of the first wave of affirmative action babies - talented children of educated parents, raised in segregated communities, they succeeded in the wider world after obvious barriers to black achievement had been eliminated.
But they have left behind a less advantaged class who needs more. Held back by the disproportionate effects of crime, poverty, AIDS and more, this group needs help from those who have found success - especially those with the power to bend government to serve the right causes.
Over the next few years, we shall see if the diversity of ethnicity in Bush's Cabinet adds up to a diversity of approaches to issues affecting people of color. If the president has simply drafted a rainbow coalition to rubber-stamp his own ideas, the real point of racial and ethnic diversity will be lost.
Eric Deggans is a Times editorial writer. His e-mail address is deggans@sptimes.com
