Updated March 21, 2013

CBC Chair Now 'Confident' on Obama's Diversity Commitment
By Zenitha Prince and Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), has significantly toned down her chiding of President Obama after saying his cabinet so far is too White male-dominated. She has now taken a wait and see approach after a conversation with Obama’s White House advisors.

“I have talked to the White House and I am confident, after our conversations, that the President is committed to diversity, so we are waiting to see what the rest of the cabinet will look like,” Fudge told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on air March 15.

Fudge was not available for further elaborate this week. Her latest posture is a major step down from a letter to the President dated only three days earlier in which she took him to task for not appointing any African-American cabinet members thus far.

“I am concerned that you have moved forward with new cabinet appointments and yet, to date, none of them have been African American,” she told the president in the March 11 letter. “You have publicly expressed your commitment to retaining diversity within your cabinet. However, the people you have chosen to appoint in this new term have hardly been reflective of this country’s diversity.”

The letter followed an earlier letter Fudge sent the President in January in which she asked him to consider her colleagues Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) for the posts of Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Labor, respectively.

Attorney General Eric Holder is currently the only African-American member of the Obama cabinet. There are two African-Americans with cabinet rank but who are not part of the order of succession for the presidency: U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. Kirk announced he would step down March 14. Valerie Jarrett, a Black woman, is a highly regarded and highly visible senior advisor to the president and his assistant for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, but not a cabinet member per se.

This absence of more diversity among Obama’s top advisors and agency heads has frustrated Blacks, a feeling that Fudge initially said “is compounded by the overwhelming support” the president has received from that community. Her posture this week reflects hope that the President is simply not finished with his appointments. As expressed in her recent letter, she says, diversity is essential for moving all of America forward.

“As you continue choosing your critical advisors, we want to stress the importance of ensuring every community has a seat at the table,” Fudge said in her letter. “The absence of diverse voices leads to policies and programs that adversely impact African Americans.”

Zenitha Prince is a reporter for the Afro American Newspaper.