Recently, Paul Ryan blundered his way into personal and professional humiliation by posting a “selfie” he had taken with young Republican interns at the Capitol. In very little time, the world noticed one very telling problem with the picture: Nearly every single smiling face was white. The upcoming generation of Republicans was as white as the last one - even as the rest of the country grows increasingly diverse.
That’s a major problem.
If You Only News was one of the first to cover the story (you can find it here); consequently, we heard from MANY conservatives unhappy that we had pointed out the detail. They accused us and others of misleading people by focusing solely on the Republican Party’s diversity problem. Surely the Democrats are just as bad, they said. Right? Conservatives been repeatedly told by right-wing outlets that liberals are the real racists, after all.
In a picture that might mercifully silence these critics, Democratic Representative E.B. Johnson posted her own version of the intern selfie and it too is very telling - but in quite a different way.
The picture of the Democratic interns look a lot different than the #speakerselfie #DemInternSelfie #Diversity pic.twitter.com/B7MucXwLwB
— US Rep E.B.Johnson (@RepEBJ) July 19, 2016
Here’s another angle:
@nycsouthpaw @RepEBJ @emmaroller @SpeakerRyan pic.twitter.com/W9pEA8kBUK
— Ricardo Harvin (@RicardoHarvin) July 20, 2016
Our inbox is filled with people pointing out the three people of color they found in Ryan’s selfie. I’m guessing it will be much easier to see the diversity in this one. No need to count.
And while it’s great to see this lesson learned in visual form, the numbers don’t lie either. The Republican Party is old and white and growing older and whiter every day. The Democratic Party has found itself embracing a much broader range of diversity in America. That gap has only grown more distant with the rise of Donald Trump, who is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the Republican Party’s problems with modern America.
After America elected its first African-American president - twice, then Democrats picked the country’s first female nominee of a major party, the Republican Party settled on… Trump. A man who launched his campaign by accusing Mexicans of being rapists, urging his supporters to attack black protesters, and floating the idea of banning Muslims from the country.
For the generation about to inherit the political process in America, the choice between these two parties has never been more defined.
Featured image via Twitter
