After 30 years of evaluating presidential Cabinet appointments for diversity, I entered this latest round feeling a tad burned out. The process is discouraging. Some Latino advocacy groups are demanding five spots on the 15-member Cabinet being assembled by President-elect Joe Biden. They’re dreaming. Given that Biden’s view of America seems to be what television was in the 1950s — “Black and white” — those who are neither Black nor White will be lucky to get three seats. Qualifications or diversity in Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks? We can have both That’s the ceiling for Latinos. And the Latino seats are always cheap seats — like running the departments of Transportation, Energy, Interior or Housing and Urban Development. Those four spots form the “barrio” of the Cabinet table. The four top seats in the high-end neighborhood are for the attorney general and the heads of the Treasury, State, and Defense departments. In Democratic administrations, those positions have been off limits to Latinos. Biden hit the mark with his first Latino appointment. He picked Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American, to be Secretary of Homeland Security. A former U.S. attorney who was director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Barack Obama, Mayorkas is first-rate. He also doesn’t appear to be the “drop the hammer” type who thinks Obama-type mass deportations solve everything. This week, after his nomination was announced, Mayorkas tweeted: “When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge. Now, I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.” That’s a win. Still, I’d rather not count wins and calculate percentages. That’s math. I got into journalism to avoid math. I was beginning to feel downright post-racial. But then I was reminded of something: Being blind to color shouldn’t mean being blind to reality. And so, just as I was getting out of the diversity game, Ben Shapiro — and I say this, in my best Michael Corleone voice — pulled me back in. The 36-year-old conservative author, media commentator and radio host has a special calling, and it’s to remind us that smart people are capable of saying things that are not that smart. This week, while discussing Biden’s emerging Cabinet, which an aide to the president-elect promised would “look like America,” Shapiro offered this gem to listeners of his radio show: https://artikel.sabda.org/full_episodes_watch_mandalorian_season_2_e5 https://artikel.sabda.org/full_episodes_watch_mandalorian_season_2_e5_online https://artikel.sabda.org/123movies_watch_mandalorian_season_2_episode_5_2020_full_online https://artikel.sabda.org/mandalorian_season_2_episode_5_s2e5_full_episodes_hd https://artikel.sabda.org/watch_mandalorian_season_2_episode_5_online_full_series https://artikel.sabda.org/123movies_watch_faze_rug_crimson_2020_full_online_free_hd https://artikel.sabda.org/hd_watch_megan_missing_2011_online_movie_full_free https://artikel.sabda.org/hd_watch_diego_maradona_2019_online_movie_full_free https://artikel.sabda.org/watch_malibu_road_2020_hd_free https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/123movies-watch-the-croods-2-a-new-age-2020-online-full-hd-free-hd https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/watch-full-the-croods-2-a-new-age-%7B2020%7D-online-movie-full-for-free-2 https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/123movies-watch-the-croods-2-a-new-age-2020-full-online-free https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/hd-watch-megan-is-missing-%7B2011%7D-online-movie-full-for-free https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/123movies-watch-borat-subsequent-moviefilm-2020-online-full-hd-free https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/123movies-watch-zappa-2020-online-full-hd-free-hd https://boxelder.instructure.com/courses/37925/pages/123movies-watch-malibu-road-2020-online-full-hd-free-hd https://www.onlinegdb.com/b3TDhpz0f https://www.onlinegdb.com/DnUaem6oR https://paiza.io/projects/cat6ERyxrZsDWzikFrz6Qg http://facebookhitlist.com/forum/topics/weekendmovies2020 https://caribbeanfever.com/photo/albums/weekendmovies2020 https://caribbeanfever.com/profiles/status/show?id=2663233%3AStatus%3A12426351 https://minimore.com/b/G2kvk/1 https://www.milesplit.com/discussion/171436 https://blog.goo.ne.jp/indexfullmoviessites/e/f1ea05e697368dd6a3028e831f371984 http://recampus.ning.com/profiles/blogs/weekendmovies2020 http://sfbats.ning.com/profiles/blogs/weekendmovies2020 http://www.easymarks.org/link/124170/weekendmovies2020 https://www.88posts.com/post/262732/weekendmovies2020 https://www.topfind123.com/link/834853/weekendmovies2020 https://ideone.com/Ww7kud https://controlc.com/05ca11a9 https://pastebin.com/RRnA9nLC https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/d72y24VMnC/ https://paste.by/FwOvyNoGKM https://pastebin.freeswitch.org/view/f306ca6e https://paste.centos.org/view/a5a75461 https://paste.ee/p/R5gAB https://p.teknik.io/RtQIz http://pastebin.falz.net/1834209 https://paste.ofcode.org/uznDPNzfbJWShEinWL4YXA https://www.pastery.net/nkhpjm/ https://0paste.com/110636 http://paste.debian.net/1174603/ https://paste.laravel.io/98ba72ed-3ab7-4eaa-9306-db80724619ba http://paste.jp/d4abaebc/ http://www.mpaste.com/p/gUiezPk https://paste2.org/Vcdk42wO https://paste.in/hSPGgw https://friendpaste.com/3exQnMV2RTxJCRiI619RsA https://paste.firnsy.com/paste/ltvscjGH0Rn https://www.heypasteit.com/clip/0IVDQN https://paste.tbee-clan.de/TNZmd# https://bpa.st/VNRQ https://justpaste.it/7jkeu http://paste.org.ru/?ws76ip https://pasteio.com/x8if6iVAFAjs http://nopaste.ceske-hry.cz/349827 https://www.links4seo.com/link/834868/weekendmovies2020 “I’m always confused by this idea that we have to proportionally represent every population in the United States in a Cabinet,” he said. “I’m not sure why that is supposed to make a difference. Other than you are a racist and you’re involved in racial essentialism. The suggestion being that your skin color, or your sex, is more important than your actual qualifications for the job.” So anyone who values diversity is a racist? Shapiro sounds like a white male who was born on third base and then can’t figure out why others can’t get a hit. When he found himself at Harvard Law School, or hosting a national radio show, did he ever survey his peers and ask himself why so many of the people who had those opportunities looked like him? I doubt it. When Shapiro lays out his argument so rigidly — either skin color and sex, or qualifications, but never both — what he is really saying is that the only “qualified” people on the planet are white males. And who decides who is qualified? Other white males. I thought this question was settled years ago thanks to extraordinarily qualified women such as Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett. They say Ginger Rogers had to do everything that Fred Astaire did — only backward and in high heels. Well, in her Senate confirmation hearings, Barrett did everything that Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito did in theirs — only a lot more effortlessly and without notes. As for African Americans, I think of outstanding individuals like former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, or former President Barack Obama. Anyone care to make the argument that Rice only achieved what she did because she is African American and a woman? Get a grip. Had she been born a white male, Rice would have still made it into the Oval Office. But she would have been sitting behind the Resolute desk. It seems we still need to keep track of diversity in Cabinet appointments. It’s how we keep people honest — and grounded in the real world.