People Are Dragging the White House Intern Program for a Lack of Diversity

Visual proof of making America great again.

In an unsurprising move from an administration that once included white nationalist Steve Bannon, the White House has come under fire after releasing a visual of the 2018 spring intern class. In the photo, President Trump poses with the 91 members selected for this year’s program, and many were quick to point out that the group, which appears overwhelmingly white, isn’t reflective of America’s diverse population.

“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, three-fifths of America’s population is non-Hispanic white,” wrote Tim Porter of Newsweek. “In the photograph, white interns appear to make up a far higher proportion of the group.”

Twitter users were a bit more candid with their assessment of the new crop of interns.

2018 version of “Where’s Waldo?” Find people of color in the White House interns pic.twitter.com/hcWVq0rGXD
Meet your White House spring interns, it’s qwhite the group. pic.twitter.com/q34ColBnSd
The Trump White House interns could be the whitest group I’ve ever encountered.

And I’m including the Nantucket Yacht Club. pic.twitter.com/QDTXHUPN74

According to Porter, the interns’ duties will include staffing events, researching, fielding inquiries and drafting memos. In theory, the opportunity looks great on a resume—even if the internship is performed under arguably one of the least popular Presidents in America’s history.

What kind of young person would want to be an intern in this White House?

As other Twitter users noted, it's worth questioning whether it's causation versus correlation. Is the group less diverse because Trump is a Nazi sympathizer who gave the editor of Breitbart an official cabinet position? Or is this new crop the result of people of color simply not wanting to work for the man who inspired one of the largest organized protests on record?

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