Joe Davidson - Room at the Top for More Diversity - washingtonpost.com: Diversity within the group of men -- and still only men -- who have been president of the United States will change significantly when Barack Obama is sworn in next month.
But when he looks across the highest level of civil servants managing the government, he'll see a mixed bag when it comes to improving the diversity of the federal Senior Executive Service. A new report by the Government Accountability Office says representation of women and people of color in the senior corps grew overall between October 2000 and September 2007, but not at all agencies. Representation at the departments of Agriculture, Education, and Health and Human Services fell in certain categories, and sometimes those dives were steep.
At Education, for example, the percentage of African American men dropped sharply, from 13.3 percent to 4.5 percent. Hispanic men disappeared altogether, from a nearly invisible 1.7 percent in 2000 to zero last year. There were no Latinas among the executives at either point. Black women, however, did experience a significant increase, from 1.7 percent to 7.6 percent.
