Sign of the Times? White House's First Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Leaves Administration

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

The White House’s first Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer is leaving the Biden administration. Is it a sign that DEI initiatives have hit their peak and are on the downturn now?

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Michael Leach is calling his three years of service in the position the “honor of a lifetime.” The White House has nothing but praise for him.

“President Biden promised to build an administration that looks like America and delivers for the American people,” White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon said.

She added, “From the campaign to now, Michael Leach was an instrumental partner to us in fulfilling this promise.”

So, this is the guy we have to thank for all the identity box checking while ignoring merit and experience, eh? Yes, he did a good job with that. Biden promised the most diverse administration in U.S. history in the ultimate political pander. The Biden administration is about 60% women and half of White House staffers are considered people of color. Mr. Leach must have been a busy man. He had to keep the majority of Americans – white Americans – at bay and fill vacancies with only the right people.

I’ll note here that Biden himself surrounds himself with white people. Biden is a very white old man. He’s racist, too, but everyone pretends not to notice. There are plenty of examples throughout Biden’s fifty years in elected office. Remember when he told an majority black audience in 2012 that Mitt Romney wanted to put them all back in chains? How about when he told a black radio show host that if he didn’t vote for him, he “wasn’t black.” Believe Joe Biden when he tells you who he is

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Anyway, the press is quoting Dr. Fauci in the story of Leach’s exit. What? At least half of the country doesn’t believe a word that comes out of Fauci’s mouth in a post-pandemic world. This White House is really bad at reading a room.

Anthony Fauci, who served as a chief medical adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he knows Biden takes diversity and inclusion “very seriously” and he had “the right person in Michael, who is very passionate about it.”

“As we’re getting deeper and deeper into the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion, a lot of people have skepticism,” Fauci said. “But I have found in my own experience, having lived through both eras — the era when there was no diversity, there was no equity and there was no inclusion, versus now when we’re seeing a fair amount of it — it is a value and has made us really better off.”

“If you don’t have people working there who reflect the community of afflicted people,” Fauci continued, “then you’re not really doing it right. You’ve got to get your reaching out into the community. You’ve got to reach out with people that look like and are part of the community.”

Again, I remember a lot of white people surrounding Fauci as he dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. The person of color who appeared with Fauci and the White House COVID task force was the surgeon general, a black man appointed by Trump for that job. I don’t know why Fauci, now retired, was dusted off and brought out for comments.

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Something I found interesting is that Leach’s previous job prior to working in the White House was at the National Football League. For a decade he worked in labor relations roles and he worked as an assistant to the head coach at the Chicago Bears. “You could tell that Michael was destined for bigger things,” Bears Chairman George McCaskey said. “We weren’t surprised at all when he was in the White House.”

NFL players are majority black Americans.

In 2022, the greatest share of players by ethnic group in the National Football League (NFL) were black or African American athletes, constituting just over 56 percent of players within the NFL. Despite the large population of Hispanic or Latino people within the United States, there is a substantial underrepresentation within the NFL, with only 0.4 percent of players identifying as such.

Anyway, Leach is probably getting out while the getting is good. Re-election chances for Biden aren’t looking so good right now. According to a recent Gallup poll, the only person less popular than him in his third year in the White House was Jimmy Carter.

President Joe Biden’s popularity rating among Americans rings alarm bells for his 2024 campaign, as only Jimmy Carter fared worse in polling during his third year in the White House, according to Gallup.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based management consulting company, during his third full year in office, between January 20, 2023 and January 19, 2024, an average of 39.8 percent of Americans approved of the president’s job performance.

That makes Biden’s third-year approval average the second worst after that of Carter among presidents elected since the 1950s. Carter had an approval rating of 37.4 percent in his third year between January 20, 1979 and January 19, 1980, based on a total of 24 polls, while Biden’s results were based on 12 polls.

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I would also point to the fact that the trend to insert DEI into everything everywhere is on the downslide. Americans are starting to wake up – slowly but surely – that putting skin color or ethnicity or gender above merit when making hiring decisions is bad policy. We see the mess that the Biden administration has created. Everyday Americans have suffered through three years of bad decisions and a lack of accountability coming from this administration. In the business world, go woke, go broke is a legit slogan. Americans are tired of being lectured to by those who think they are better than everyone else.

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John Sexton 9:20 PM | November 01, 2024
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