Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees vs white, male American establishment

US President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during a prime-time address from the East Room of the White House on March 11, 2021, in Washington DC. (Image: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

What is common between Neera Tanden, Vanita Gupta, Vivek Murthy, Debra Haaland, Xavier Becerra, Alejandro Mayorkas, Katherine Tai and Lloyd Austin other than all of them being citizens of the United States in public service for their country?

They are all minorities, some of them first generation immigrants, whose nominations by US President Joe Biden to serve in his administration have faced delays and hurdles in the Senate. Contrast this with Biden’s white nominees, whose confirmation process and swearing-in have sailed through in most cases. The Senate is historically white, of course, and has been largely populated by males for almost its entire history.

Tanden and Gupta were humbled by the respective Senate committees before which they appeared for their confirmation hearings: both Indian American women repeatedly apologised for having legitimately expressed their views on issues of the day in the recent past. Tanden had to go through the additional humiliation of having to delete at least 1,000 of her tweets ahead of her grilling by the committee, tweets which expressed her deep-rooted beliefs and what she thought should be the way forward for the US on many important subjects.

Even such abject capitulation before self-righteous Caucasian males did not salvage her job prospect. Faced with certain rejection by the Senate, Tanden withdrew herself from consideration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget on March 2. Had she been confirmed, Tanden would have broken a glass ceiling for Indian Americans and made history in terms of diversity in US statecraft.

As former First Lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s long-time confidante and a prodigious organiser, Tanden has had a prominent public persona in Washington for many years. That has not been the case with Vanita Gupta, but her story is the stuff of what is often described as the ‘American dream’.

Vanita Gupta’s father, Rajiv Gupta, was born in Muzaffarnagar and graduated from IIT, Bombay. He built Rohm and Haas, a leader in speciality chemicals manufacturing, into a 17,000-worker company in Philadelphia, which was acquired by Dow Chemicals for $15 billion a decade ago. Three years ago he repaid a sentimental academic debt to his alma mater, Drexel University, with a $5 million gift.

Rajiv Gupta gave his daughter everything she could have asked for — schooling in France, later education in the United Kingdom, a bachelor’s degree from Yale and finally graduation in legal studies from New York University. Yet, when she appeared for her Senate confirmation hearings, such an outstanding academic record and later professional achievements were not enough to make her equal to other white Biden nominees.

America, the predecessor nation to the US, belonged to Debra Haaland’s tribe and similar other Native American tribes. Laguna Pueblo, the tribe in New Mexico of which Haaland is a citizen, helped propel her to the US House of Representatives in 2018 — a rare achievement and recovery for a people who were victims of genocide when white settlers arrived from Europe to conquer the ‘New World’.

Haaland’s work as Vice Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee alone should have been enough to unanimously confirm her as Biden’s nominee for Interior Secretary. But alas, no! Camouflaging racist opposition to this Native American in the garb of climate and energy policies and a fight over fossil fuels, the Senate has delayed her confirmation till the time of writing. Indications are that it may finally happen after much haggling among the white men who have a whip hand on Haaland’s appointment, the first Native American Cabinet choice by any US President.

Unlike Tanden and Gupta, who capitulated before white men along the way to their confirmation process, one Black man stood up to bullying by white Senators. He is Lloyd Austin, the retired Army General, who has become the first African American Defence Secretary. Austin was able to do that because he has confronted a life time of discrimination in the US Army.

Slightly less than half of the 1.38 million men and women in uniform who have signed up to defend the US are non-whites. Yet, the top ranks of the Pentagon constitute a mass of white faces. During the presidency of Donald Trump, it became worse. Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, had a difficult time even appointing a woman, albeit white, as the only exception to the all white, male bastion of Joint Staff Directors and Vice Directors at the Pentagon.

Ever since Biden nominated Austin to be Defence Secretary, insidious attempts have been under way to dig up dirt on him. But so far nothing has stuck to this towering man who makes people look up when he walks into a room. His tenure will be closely watched for changes he can — or cannot — bring to one of the most entrenched institutions in the US, the Pentagon. His early confirmation by the Senate, unlike in cases of most other minority nominations, is a good augury.

Biden’s will be most racially and ethnically diverse Cabinet in US history if all his nominees are confirmed. But as of now the Senate is taking its own time to let go of its privileges that are the relics of a bygone era.