This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

This is “The Opinions,” a show that brings you a mix of voices from “New York Times” Opinion. You’ve heard the news. Here’s what to make of it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My name is Farah Stockman, and I am a member of “The New York Times” editorial board. I also write about foreign policy and domestic politics. Well, as we come to the end of Biden’s term, I think it’s really important for Americans to reflect on the diversity of this administration. It really is the most diverse administration in American history. And that was a goal of Joe Biden’s.

On the campaign trail, Biden promised to appoint a cabinet that looked like the American people, and he really did deliver. More than half of his cabinet were people of color. He had the first African-American secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin. Deb Haaland was the first Native American to serve in a cabinet, as she was secretary of interior. He had the first openly gay permanent cabinet secretary, Pete Buttigieg, the first female treasury secretary, Janet Yellen. He had a lot of firsts.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I really started to think about the importance of the Biden administration’s diversity when I took a trip to Jamaica a few years ago, and a friend of mine in Kingston was telling me that gay people in Kingston were starting to bring home their boyfriends or girlfriends for Christmas for the first time in their lives because the Biden administration had appointed gay people to positions of power — Pete Buttigieg and Karine Jean-Pierre, who is speaking for the White House from the podium.

And that mattered. It mattered to him, and it mattered to these well-to-do Jamaican families that were taking the cues of what’s socially acceptable from the White House. And so it just got me thinking about what it means when the most powerful country in the world is modeling acceptance of not only gay people, but also different races serving in high positions.

Through my reporting over four years, I started asking, what does this diversity mean? How does it impact the way people do their jobs? So Wally Adeyemo, who is Deputy Treasury Secretary, was in charge of revamping the sanctions policies. He’s from Nigeria. And he had grown up watching his parents send money through Western Union to their relatives.

So he had a personal life experience with what it is like if the US government suddenly cuts off community from its financial lifeline in the United States. And that led him to argue for tweaks and changes that would have made it less likely that an innocent person would get caught up in US sanctions.

I asked the same question to Sameera Fazili, who was in charge of Biden’s industrial policy. What does it mean that your family is from Indian-held Kashmir, and you’re here serving in the US government?

And she said, oh, yeah, I knew how angry my relatives who were living abroad would be if they couldn’t get Ukrainian grain after the war started. She said, I knew they were going to blame Americans, not Russians. So I volunteered to coordinate the effort to get food security to places in the Global South because of the conversations that I had with my relatives.

I spoke with people who work with Shalanda Young, a Black woman serving as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. She grew up in a very small town in Louisiana. And people who work with her told me how she always looked at the budget through the lens of what it’s like to be in a rural area, super far from a hospital.

She also had a really amazing way with Republicans. She knew how to charm them because she was from Louisiana, and she had dealt with a lot of Republicans from the South. She is credited with personally guiding the US government away from shutdown. The Biden administration did not have a major government shutdown over budgets, and some people say it’s because of her. She was so charming and she knew how to work the Hill.

And so when you hear the critique of DEI hires, there’s this sense that, oh, the people who are in these positions, they don’t deserve them, right, simply because they’re Black or simply because they’re brown. But someone like Shalanda Young proves that wrong.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Biden’s commitment to diversity in his cabinet and his administration was historic. It was important. It was far reaching. I do think there were times you could argue it went too far or that they talked about it in a way that was just destined to invite backlash.

When you say, I’m going to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, you open yourself up to people concluding that that Black woman isn’t qualified, except for the color of her skin. I wish he had just appointed her [LAUGHS]: and not mentioned her race.

I think the Biden administration’s commitment to diversity was poorly understood. So the first couple of years, most of the pushback or a lot of the pushback came from liberals who were saying, OK, yeah, the most diverse cabinet in US history. Whatever, dude. Look at the inner circle around Joe Biden. It’s still full of white people. And so that was kind of a fatal flaw. It had no constituency.

Liberals were going to say that whatever they did was never enough, and Republicans were going to come out swinging against it with all they had. And so, four years later, Joe Biden didn’t campaign on DEI, didn’t campaign on diversity, and Kamala Harris didn’t. And you could argue she couldn’t because they slandered her as a DEI hire.

But this administration invested so much, so much in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Literally, billions of dollars were put into this. And they couldn’t campaign on it. They couldn’t tell you what they did because it had become a toxic subject.

Around the world, we’re seeing a rise in ethnonationalism. Even in democracies like India, it’s become very difficult to be Muslim in India right now. You’re seeing people all over the world retreat into their ethnic and religious identities. But the United States, under the Biden administration, was something different. And I feel like we’re in danger of losing that right now.

Republicans have come out swinging against DEI efforts. They’ve talked about it as communism. They’ve talked about it as destroying meritocracy. And the Republicans have promised to bring back the issue of merit, which is pretty ironic, given the people Donald Trump has nominated for his own administration and how unqualified they are.

Trump has even said that he would encourage Congress to create a fund for people who had been discriminated against by the Biden administration, insinuating that the ones who had been elevated to positions of power under this rubric of diversity were unqualified. So there’s this message that if you are Black or brown and you had an important position, that you didn’t deserve it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that diversity was really a key source of power for the United States. It was our comparative advantage, because newcomers can come here and know that, eventually, they could rise, and they could serve in the highest levels of the American government. They could come here and help run the place.

But newcomers who go to China or Russia, that’s not true. I mean, this has always been our strength. Henry Kissinger wasn’t American-born. Madeleine Albright wasn’t American-born. If you think about people who represent the United States on the world stage, a number of them have not been born here. I can’t say we’re the only country like that, but there’s not many. It’s really a source of strength for us if we do it right.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I will say that a majority of Americans still say they feel that these efforts are important. It’s losing popularity from where it was in the wake of the George Floyd protests. But still, the majority of Americans believe it’s important. And we shouldn’t forget that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If you liked this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vishakha Darbha, Phoebe Lett, Kristina Samulewski, and Jillian Weinberger. It’s edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie-Rose Strasser.

Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud, and Efim Shapiro. Additional music by Aman Sahota. The fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta, Kristina Samulewski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.