U.S. Voters Discriminate!

Writing in the Washington Post today, Felicia Sonmez accuses U.S. voters of discrimination — actual discrimination, not making discriminating choices among candidates. For Ms. Sonmez the fact that the new twelve member debt committee has one woman (Sen. Patty Murray), one Hispanic (Rep. Xavier Becerra), and one black (Rep. James Clyburn) means that it is not diverse enough. One gets the feeling that she wouldn’t feel much better about it even if it had one Asian.

The point of her article is, as its title states, is that the “Debt supercommittee lacks diversity,” but since the lack of diversity on that committee is an accurate if pale (actually, accurate because it is pale) reflection of the Congress as a whole, and the members of Congress are elected by the nation’s voters, she is inescapably claiming that those voters discriminate in their choice of representatives.

Women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population, according to the most recent Census, but comprise just 17 percent of members of Congress, according to figures from the House and Senate press galleries.

Hispanics made up 16 percent of the country’s population in the 2010 Census and comprise 6 percent of the 112th Congress. And African Americans are 13 percent of the U.S. population and 8 percent of the Congress.

The Senate faces a particular lack of racial diversity: Its membership includes two Hispanics — Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — and two Asian Americans — Sens. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii). No African American senators currently sit in the chamber; the last to serve was Roland Burris (D-Ill.), who retired last year from the seat formerly held by President Obama and was succeeded in November by Sen. Mark Kirk (R).

Perhaps someone should remind Ms. Sonmez that according to the approved script liberals are always supposed to assert in public that they oppose quotas.

ADDENDUM

There is one interesting admission in the article, presumably inserted by a Washington Post editor: the caption under a picture of a smiling Rep. Clyburn with a link to a Photo Gallery, which states that “Obama calls the debt ceiling legislation ‘an important first step’ in ensuring the nation lives within its means.”

It appears as though even the president himself recognizes that he has taken no steps in his first two and a half years in office to bring about that result.