Biden prioritizing diversity when selecting next Fed Vice Chair sparks criticism: 'Sad & discriminatory'
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked Thursday about President Biden's selection process to decide who to nominate for vice chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve. In her response, Jean-Pierre said that Biden will prioritize diversity when considering potential nominees.
"On the search for Fed Vice Chair, can you talk about the decision-making process there with regard to how the president is considering diversity? There's been some pressure from senators to name a Latino candidate, for example. How much, how important is it to the president to name a woman or a person of color to that job?" a reporter asked during the White House's daily press briefing.
"So, I'll just first say that clearly filling that vacancy is something that's important to the president and we'll certainly nominate someone in the near future. When it comes to diversity, you've heard this from the president, you've heard this from me, you've heard this from many of us here, diversity and representation is really important to this president," Jean-Pierre responded.
"We're going to look at, the president's going to look at, at a highly diverse group of world-class economists just as we did for the previous Fed nominations, so we're going to continue that process," she continued.
Jeane-Pierre went on to list statistics about the racial, gender and sexual diversity within the Biden administration.
"I want to take the opportunity to layout how diverse the president's cabinet has been, how diverse the president's administration has been. The cabinet is majority people of color for the first time in history. The cabinet is majority female for the first time in history. A majority of White House senior staff identity is female. 40% of White House senior staff identify as part of the racially diverse communities, and a record seven assistants to the president are openly LGBTQ-plus," she said.
"So again, this is something that the president prides himself on, that he actually has taken action to show the diversity of this administration, and so he will continue not just with this Fed Vice Chair occupancy but with any occupancy or any position that's within the White House," Jeane-Pierre said.
Many centrists and conservatives criticized Jeane-Pierre's remarks for prioritizing immutable characteristics like race and gender instead of focusing on one's merit independent of such qualities.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-prioritizing-diversity-selecting-next-fed-vice-chair-sparks-criticism-sad-discriminatory
