On December 7 (that’s over eight days ago), nationally syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette asked the following question: “Will Cabinet be a Latino-free zone?”
Navarrette’s column then proceeded to break down why the need to ask this question in the first place is important. You should read it. Navarrette even covers the critiques as to why he’s even asking the question, but just in case you want some quick takeaway, this is the point that sticks: “Here we have supposedly one of the world’s greatest talent scouts and he looks all around the country and, for the most part, the only talented people he can find to head up government departments are white men? Worse, he seems to be having difficulty finding any Latinos who are qualified to run anything?”
The Navarrette column was the not the first to ask the question. In fact, six days before Navarrette wrote his piece, a December 1 commentary from The Dallas Morning News asked: “Will Trump appoint any Hispanics to his Cabinet?” This piece, written by Louis Caldera, breaks down the history of Latinos in Cabinet positions (FYI, it isn’t a good one) and then says that President-elect Trump has a critical choice to make:
Many Hispanics, myself included, question whether Donald Trump sees the Hispanic community that way: as brimming with talent and from whose ranks many future American leaders must come. If he does, he will appoint many Hispanics to senior roles in his administration.
Trump at this point has many more fences to mend with a number of American communities than most presidents usually do. Who he picks for his cabinet is one place for the fence-mending to begin. Or his choices can offer further evidence of an indifference, or worse, toward the Hispanic community that many Hispanics already fear. The choice is his.
So here we have two people asking the question in national outlets and as of December 15, there is legit media silence from the mainstream. Which leads us to ask: do people even care?
It is a question our founder was tweeting about earlier this morning, which led us to ask the same question when we saw his tweet and decided to write a post about it all:
Do people care that Trump Cabinet will likely not have any Latino on it, the first time this will happen since Carter admin?
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) December 15, 2016
As expected, the responses were telling:
@julito77 You're right…but I'm more concerned about the lack of qualification. No Latinos doesn't surprise me, tbh.
— Ryan Almodovar (@OfTheModovar) December 15, 2016
@julito77 Nope. Nobody cares.
— Frinco (@VictorZapat1) December 15, 2016
@julito77 Off putting..He isn't EEEVen resurrecting Alberto Gonzales a political Conserv..#TransitionHR functns on T-elects individ view…
— doctorehazard (@globalhomegirl) December 15, 2016
& @julito77 my professinl & polit concern-This behav exacerbates the deep, continuous, dismissal of Latinos ND US body politic+ #history
— doctorehazard (@globalhomegirl) December 15, 2016
Then there is this point from Navarrette: “The president-elect told us so himself. Trump is proud that he received nearly three out of every 10 Latino votes. He brags about it all the time. And as you may recall, during the campaign, he declared: ‘The Hispanics love me’ Now, Hispanics have the right to look at Trump’s Cabinet nominations and ask if he loves them back.”
With all this talk from national Latino organizations saying they are open to talking with the President-elect but will still hold him accountable, it’s pretty quiet out there right now.
Maybe nobody truly cares. Maybe the Latino community will choose to just resist All Things Trump and get over the need to feel placated by his administration. Hard to tell because no one is really having a real national conversation about it.
Yeah, nobody cares.
