The administration of the United States President Donald Trump has been accused of racial and gender bias by a top Indian-American diplomat, Uzra Zeya. Known as an affable diplomat, Zeya was also posted in the US Embassy in Delhi heading the Political Section.
Zeya, who resigned after a service spanning more than 25 years, said the Trump administration has been following a trend that involves “the exclusion of minorities from top leadership positions in the State Department and embassies abroad”, reports The Times of India.
Born in the United States to Indian immigrants, Zeya has now come out to say that minorities are being cold-shouldered in Trump’s America.
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“In the first five months of the Trump administration, the department’s three most senior African-American career officials and the top-ranking Latino career officer were removed or resigned abruptly from their positions, with white successors named in their places. In the months that followed, I observed top-performing minority diplomats be disinvited from the secretary’s senior staff meeting, relegated to FOIA duty (well below their abilities), and passed over for bureau leadership roles and key ambassadorships,” Zeya said in a piece written for Politico last week, titled “Trump Is Making American Diplomacy White Again.”
Further, as per her analysis with data sourced from the American Foreign Service Association, Zeya added, Trump administration has nominated 64 per cent white non-Hispanic males of all ambassadorial nominations – a 7 percentage point jump as compared to the trend seen during the Obama years.
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“President Trump stands out from his six predecessors in his failure so far to nominate a single African-American female ambassador; African-American women made up 6 per cent of all ambassadors under President Barack Obama and 5 per cent under President George W Bush, who had two African-American secretaries of state,” Zeya wrote.
Zeya also noted that the upward trend seen in the past few decades as regards appointment of female ambassadors has also been reversed under the Trump regime.
The US State Department led by Mike Pompeo, however, has challenged Zeya’s claims. A spokesperson said that the Secretary “has placed incredible emphasis on staffing up the State Department and increasing diversity as well as reinvigorating and restoring the finest diplomatic corps in the world”.