The State Department’s Lack of Diversity Is Bad for U.S. Diplomacy

In 2020, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign vowed to advance the United States’ role in the world—most notably by promising to put human rights at the center of his administration’s foreign policy. At the same time—amid a global racial reckoning after the brutal and unjust murder of George Floyd—Biden’s campaign made advancing racial equality a priority. U.S. State Department officials since Biden took office have often said that “diversity and inclusion makes us stronger, smarter, more creative and more innovative.” And while that talking point was music to the ears of many U.S. government employees of color, a stark reality proves otherwise.

It’s well known in Foggy Bottom and beyond that the State Department was, for much of the 20th century, designed to keep African Americans out, as former U.S. diplomat Christopher Richardson argued in the New York Times.

Take, for example, Terence Todman: a six-time U.S. ambassador tasked with sensitive diplomatic negotiations on behalf of the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. Earlier in his career, Todman couldn’t even sit down for a meal with fellow aspiring foreign service officers due to segregation of the Foreign Service Institute’s dining facilities in late 1950s Virginia. He fought to dismantle systemic racism at the State Department and eventually integrate the dining facility.

In 2020, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign vowed to advance the United States’ role in the world—most notably by promising to put human rights at the center of his administration’s foreign policy. At the same time—amid a global racial reckoning after the brutal and unjust murder of George Floyd—Biden’s campaign made advancing racial equality a priority. U.S. State Department officials since Biden took office have often said that “diversity and inclusion makes us stronger, smarter, more creative and more innovative.” And while that talking point was music to the ears of many U.S. government employees of color, a stark reality proves otherwise.

It’s well known in Foggy Bottom and beyond that the State Department was, for much of the 20th century, designed to keep African Americans out, as former U.S. diplomat Christopher Richardson argued in the New York Times.

Take, for example, Terence Todman: a six-time U.S. ambassador tasked with sensitive diplomatic negotiations on behalf of the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. Earlier in his career, Todman couldn’t even sit down for a meal with fellow aspiring foreign service officers due to segregation of the Foreign Service Institute’s dining facilities in late 1950s Virginia. He fought to dismantle systemic racism at the State Department and eventually integrate the dining facility.

I was present last year during the ceremony to rename the State Department cafeteria in his honor, which was a special tribute to his legacy that came seven years after his passing. Yet African American diplomats are still subject to harsh treatment from their own colleagues, some of whom use tools of coercion, manipulation, gaslighting, and enduring systems to keep the “pale, male, and Yale” culture alive.

If the United States aspires to lead by the power of example on the global stage, then a drastic effort to promote inclusion is the only viable path forward. At a time when the threat to U.S. democracy includes the active erasure of African American progress in history books, it is essential to ask what a foreign-policy establishment with a genuine emphasis on retaining African American talent, ideas, and contributions would look like.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article that highlighted widespread discrimination and harassment as revealed by an internal State Department survey, saying, “I’ve been clear that fully addressing the Department’s shortcomings when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility isn’t something we’d be able to achieve overnight.” The State Department is an institution that has upheld practices of systemic racism that have often gone overlooked and unchecked for centuries. Attention from Blinken and others should be welcomed, but it must be combined with swift and decisive action.

The State Department should also engage regularly with African American lawmakers and media. The secretary of state and deputy secretary of state as well as undersecretaries and assistant secretaries across regional and functional bureaus should all proactively engage with members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and its staff. I came into my job as principal deputy spokesperson at the U.S. State Department with extensive connections to the CBC, whose leadership I worked for.

I also understood and shared the value of engaging with African American media as a critical tool for understanding and shaping opinion through diplomatic storytelling. During my time routinely attending in-person press briefings for nearly a year and a half, there was only ever one African American reporter in the briefing room, who, because of rotation rules at the time, only made an appearance once every few months.

Those outside of Foggy Bottom may not know that the State Department’s briefing room is named after Carl Rowan, a former African American ambassador and journalist. The department should honor his legacy by inviting African American journalists to cover the daily press briefings and provide them access to interview department principals.

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In addition, the State Department should embrace African Americans as integral stakeholders. Current diversity data includes information on members of the Senior Foreign Service and Civil Service; there should also be a focus on diversity among presidential appointees and contractors.

The State Department should be letting African Americans do the jobs they were assigned to do rather than preventing them from doing their assigned work while providing flowery press statements, photo opportunities, and artfully crafted tweets. Instead, African Americans within the department have long been conditioned to “keep their heads down” to do work that yields slow upward mobility.

Finally, African American employees need to be empowered. African Americans face challenges of sponsorship and overall support at work, which is especially prevalent in the foreign-policy field. Fostering a culture of sponsorship and mentorship that extends existing homogenous networks would promote growth and inclusion rather than repeating cycles of traditional exclusion.

Yet glass cliff isolation remains prevalent among African Americans regardless of what level they are at in their careers. The U.S. State Department would be thriving today if leaders unified around implementing inclusive values instead of preventing a long-underrepresented group from succeeding in the jobs they rightfully earned.

Offering a compelling alternative vision of the United States to the world means drastically changing behaviors and creating the will to implement those changes soon. Currently, Black people who work in foreign policy face some of the same obstacles Todman faced more than 50 years ago. They must navigate through constant institutionalized land mines that stem from their superiors, peers, and even those they manage. These include attacks on personal appearance; being left out of key meetings, email chains, or conversations relating to their work; or ultimately being silenced.

Of the 13 core dimensions required to be a foreign service officer, a few include cultural adaptability, judgment, and ability to work with others. If one looks at the ranks of the current Senior Foreign Service, it comes as no surprise that diversity is sorely lacking. So when one of the United States’ top diplomats in Afghanistan recently tweeted, “Are Afghans familiar with #BlackGirlMagic and the movement it inspired? Do Afghan girls need a similar movement? What about Afghan women? Teach me, ready to learn,” readers at home and abroad were stunned by her tone deafness.

Although both African American women and Afghan women experience varying degrees of oppression, senior diplomatic and other government officials must respect their differences, which stems from understanding who they are rather than conflating their struggles or reducing the significance of either in any way. History shows that white women have been the largest beneficiaries of diversity and affirmative action programs, but when those women seek to become the spokespeople and purveyors of diversity without consideration for or the consent of people of color, the damage can be severe.

For the United States to lead from a position of strength, its diplomats should have a broader understanding of the diversity of American culture as well as the culture of the host countries where they serve. When senior diplomatic officials undermine vulnerable and underrepresented groups, it not only hinders the foreign-policy making process but also weakens the United States’ standing globally.

The near homogeneous makeup of the U.S. diplomatic corps reflects a lack of knowledge and understanding of the breadth of the larger American experience, as displayed in this tweet and a plethora of other behind-the-scenes practices of regular microaggressions. This lack of local cultural competency does not set the State Department up for success either at home or on the global stage, and it can be avoided in the future by welcoming the inclusion of African American counsel, ideas, and solutions at the table.

If the foreign-policy community in the United States plans on making a lasting impact, then flowery words, tweets, and press statements are simply not enough. Window dressing touted as diversity does not yield a more inclusive foreign policy. The United States needs diversity that represents genuine inclusion—not simply for a select few.

From Patricia Roberts Harris to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, African Americans have long made important contributions to U.S. foreign policy and the national security community at large—and they continue to do so today. The best way to honor them is to actively prioritize the inclusion of African Americans in the U.S. diplomatic corps and foreign-policy community. The country’s strength and security depend on it.