The Foreign Service Journal, December 2008

focused only on the need for increas- es in personnel benefits, with little attention to the content of foreign assistance execution. On a positive note, I was delighted to see the FSJ survey results high- lighted in the September “Letter from the Editor,” which reflected my own feelings totally. I also loved the first-hand focus articles on Islam, Iraq and others so much that I have mailed issues of the Journal to a former DOD neighbor back in D.C. who refuses to go electronic. Thanks and keep up your great teamwork. Kevin Burke USAID FSO, retired Cape Cod, Mass. The White Males Have we gone so far in being polit- ically correct that “white” and “male” are now practically disqualifications for serving as Secretary of State? By the time the next Secretary is installed, it will have been 12 years and three presidential terms since the last white male held the position. With each succeeding Secretary, the incumbent president has attempt- ed to “prove” something — to deliver a political-social “message” about the United States, about U.S. foreign pol- icy, about representative inclusive- ness. Thus we have had the first woman in the position, the first Afri- can-American, and the first African- American woman. This approach resembles central casting. What’s next? The first His- panic Secretary of State? The first Asian-American? The first “different- ly abled”? The State Department has done its part on “diversity.” Currently, 28 per- cent of State’s Civil Service/Foreign Service complement consists of mi- norities; almost 17 percent are Afri- can-American. In 2008, the Black Collegian listed State as a “preferred employer among diverse audiences” — the only government agency listed in the top 100 (and rated 11th). Are we moving to set-asides for each group and subcategory? It was insulting for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to say in a September speech that there were too few blacks at State and that she “can go into a whole day of meetings and rarely see somebody who looks like me.” Is she arguing that by their nature those around her are unquali- fied? That they do not merit their positions? That sounds racist to this Asian-American, who does not “look like” Sec. Rice and prefers not to be judged by her race. It’s time to free ourselves from labels and succeed on our own without it reflecting on our “category.” Let us recognize that the recent Secretaries of State have not left us gasping with awe for their brilliance or horrified at their proven incompetence. Nor can we say that any of the recent harvest of department heads has made a defin- ing difference in the management/res- olution of any of the current batch of major problems: the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Russia, China and India/Pakistan. Furthermore, our two most effec- tive Secretaries of State in the past generation have been “pale males,” George Shultz and James Baker. Secretary Shultz dealt with Soviet interlocutors to negotiate seminal bilateral arms control agreements during the closing years of the Cold War. Secretary Baker, through guile and inducements, assembled a huge military coalition under a United Nations mandate to reverse Iraqi aggression in Kuwait. Their success is their own and certainly no proof that only pale males deserve the position, but neither should it preclude them from consideration. Can we start considering white males again for Secretary of State? Teresa Chin Jones FSO, retired Arlington, Va. 10 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8 C ORRECTION We regret several errors in the obituary for former FSO Andrew Hillman (In Memory, October). Mr. Hillman died on July 9 at his home in Edgemont, N.Y. He served in the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York from 1997 until his death. Since 2001, Mr. Hillman had also taught at Seton Hall University and Ford- ham University. He is survived by his son, Alexander Hillman, of Chatham, Mass. The complete, corrected obitu- ary is available online at www.afsa. org/fsj/oct08/inMemory.pdf. L E T T E R S