A photo of the White House summer 2018 interns, with US President Donald Trump (centre), has again placed his administration under scrutiny over its commitment to diversity, or lack thereof. Photo: White House<doc-sep>Past group photos of White House interns under President Donald Trump have drawn criticism for showing a group of overwhelmingly white young people. This summer, the White House didn’t make much progress on diversity — they just didn’t release the photo. A group picture with President Donald Trump showed the summer 2017 class was very white and very male. In the fall 2017 picture, observers pointed out one of the interns seemed to be making a white power gesture. (He denied it.) And the spring 2018 class was, again, very white (although with more female interns represented). The White House appears not to be in a hurry to put out its summer 2018 intern picture, but Vox obtained a copy. The photo of 128 summer interns surrounding President Trump gives an overall impression of a sea of white faces, with those who appear to be people of color dramatically outnumbered. That’s despite the fact that almost half of millennials in the United States are minorities. The White House’s summer internship program this year ran from May 30 to August 10, and the photo, which has appeared on at least one now-former intern’s Instagram account, has yet to be released. Last year, members of the media were invited into the summer 2017 photo op, with the Associated Press capturing video of the picture being taken. This year, the spring 2018 class picture was distributed by the White House as one of its photos of the week. But the summer internship program has been over for two and a half weeks, and the White House has yet to distribute it, as its photo of the week or otherwise. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the photo, its release, and the diversity of its intern class. Instead of fixing its diversity problem, the White House would rather just keep it under wraps Earlier this month, Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to the president, was stumped in an appearance on ABC’s This Week when host Jonathan Karl asked her to name a high-level black person serving on Trump’s White House staff now that Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who was fired in December, is out. Trump’s Cabinet is the whitest, most male-dominated group since Ronald Reagan’s. There were seven women and 10 people of color in President Barack Obama’s first 22-member Cabinet; in Trump’s 24-member cabinet, there were four women and four people of color, according to Business Insider. Conway first pointed to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who Karl pointed out isn’t on White House staff. She then arrived at Ja’Ron Smith, special assistant to the president for domestic policy. He doesn’t work in the West Wing, though, and there are no black staffers listed as making the $179,700 maximum annual salary for White House employees. Staff photos suggest that the diversity problem starts at the bottom: Vice President Mike Pence’s photo in January with the fall 2017 White House page class did not have a single person of color. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was criticized in 2016 when he tweeted out a picture and a group of interns that was, again, heavily white. You can draw a line between the lack of diversity among interns and the lack of diversity in the White House and, more broadly, among Republican leadership. Internships are part of the pipeline to higher positions in the GOP, and if people of color aren’t getting them, it’s harder for them to advance. That’s how you end up with all-white, all-male groups holding federal government health care debates or discussing family separation and immigration. A lack of staff diversity isn’t only a Republican problem: a 2017 study found that most Senate Democratic staffers are white (and mostly women). Trump has low approval ratings among millennials and nonwhites, and the White House internship program requires participants to be committed to the Trump administration’s mission. So, it’s likely the pool of applicants the White House is pulling from isn’t a particularly diverse one in the first place. Trump also has a history of making racist remarks: earlier this year, for example, he referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as “shithole countries,” and last week he sent out a tweet echoing white nationalist propaganda about South African farmers. He said both sides were to blame for racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. But rather than grapple with why it consistently fails to attract nonwhite interns, the White House apparently decided to keep the picture to itself.<doc-sep>White House, white interns. That appears to be the going trend for the Trump administration, which is getting some flak for its nearly all-white class of summer interns. While it hasn’t yet released this summer’s group photo, as would usually happen, Vox’s Emily Stewart got hold of it, revealing it in an article Wednesday. As might have been expected, Twitter immediately took note, brewing a firestorm of controversy. Users began sharing the photo and adding captions suggesting others take a look to see if they noticed anything peculiar, much like like a game of iSpy, except less fun. While there are a few non-white faces in the crowd, they are surrounded by a virtual sea of apparent homogeneity, which prompted a slew of remarks on the administration’s non-diverse selection from a country in which nearly half of millennials are minorities, as Vox noted. One writer at the outlet cautioned anyone viewing the photo to “use a hole punched in a shoe box, or a special pair of glasses.” “This much whiteness can burn the retinas,” he tweeted. Check out the reactions below: Here is the official White House photo of the Summer 2018 Intern Class, which the White House refused to release to the press. (You can see Trump standing in the center.) Go ahead, enlarge it. See if you can find a single non-white person in the photo. pic.twitter.com/DwbWw9Oh0o — Mike Sington (@MikeSington) August 29, 2018 Having taken heat in the past for its photos of all-white groups of White House interns, the White House opted this year to … not release a photo. https://t.co/Uh8jvgc3IP — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 29, 2018 What is wrong with this photograph of the Summer 2018 White House intern class? pic.twitter.com/jIpTUIBFmU — Jeffrey Guterman, Ph.D. (@JeffreyGuterman) August 29, 2018 When you look at this picture of this year’s White House interns, use a hole punched in a shoe box, or a special pair of glasses. This much whiteness can burn the retinas. https://t.co/I1W3Ke4b6x — David Roberts (@drvox) August 29, 2018 Vox: “Almost half of millennials in the United States are minorities.”https://t.co/0D7fnY1kf0 — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 29, 2018 Oops. The @WhiteHouse seems to have forgotten to release this year’s especially #MAGA intern photo. I wonder why. Lucky for us, @voxdotcom obtained a leaked copy.#whitesplosion pic.twitter.com/vqeVZk4L6j — Todd Breasseale (@TBreassealeDHS) August 29, 2018 [Featured image via Getty, header via white White House] Have a tip we should know? [email protected]<doc-sep>
A photo of the summer 2018 White House intern class appears to show just a handful of people of color in the mostly white group of 128 interns. The photo has not yet been released by the White House Photo Office. A copy was obtained by Vox after former interns posted the picture on Instagram once their internship ended August 10. The president can be seen standing in the middle. Exclusive: here’s the photo of a very white summer intern class the White House didn’t release https://t.co/mNyjsZlTrC — Vox (@voxdotcom) August 29, 2018 This isn't the first time Trump has hired a White House intern class that is predominately white. The White House has faced past criticism for its intern class photos that repeatedly appear to show a lack of diversity when it comes to race. In March, the White House released the spring intern class photo. Featured as one of the White House's "Photos of the Week," it too showed a nearly entirely white intern class. The White House intern photo is like a Where’s Waldo for a non-white person—in a country that is about 40% non-white. pic.twitter.com/UiBLewAurE — Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 31, 2018 Vice President Mike Pence received backlash after posing for a photo with the fall 2017 White House page class interns, all of whom were white. Great work by the Fall 2017 Page Class, who graduate this week and will return to their homes across the country. Spoke with them about their work on the Hill and what they plan to do to help our Nation in the future. Inspiring group! pic.twitter.com/ym9oVE41rH — Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) January 24, 2018 The summer 2017 class was also predominately white, showing most of the interns as males. Nearly half of millennials are people of color. Trump's White House interns: pic.twitter.com/WLXNCA5TVj — Be Reasonable (@LOLBeReasonable) July 24, 2017 Differences have been pointed out between the current White House intern classes compared to those under President Barack Obama that featured more young people of color. The continuing practice of choosing overwhelmingly white intern classes highlights the lack of people of color in the current administration, whether it be as interns or as official employees. After the dismissal of White-House-aide-turned-Trump-critic Omarosa Manigault Newman, a CNN review of 48 senior White House officials found there were zero black officials remaining. Only a handful of senior staff members were of Latino, Asian or Arab descent. In Obama's first 22-member cabinet, there were 10 people of color. Seven of them were women. But in Trump's first cabinet of 24 people, there were four people of color and four women, according to Business Insider. Those statistics made Trump's first cabinet the most white and male since President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, according to The New York Times. Gina Loudon, a member of Trump's 2020 Advisory Council, defended the president's lack of diversity in the White House earlier this month when she said presidents have done "amazing" things for black people without including them in the past. "You look back at our history, we have a pretty amazing history of overcoming slavery, of expanding civil rights, of women's rights, and a lot of those things happened under American presidents who didn't have any minorities at all in their White Houses," Loudon said on CNN.