In questioning Robert Shriver, the Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) confessed that listening to one of Shriver’s conversations with another Congress member “was hitting me a little differently, as a Black woman sitting here.”
At OPM, Shriver is working to increase opportunities for employment in the federal government, and to fill the federal workforce with qualified individuals drawn from diverse backgrounds. But when Crockett heard him discuss this goal on the floor, she thought she identified a problem that affected her personally.
To Crockett, it seemed that Shriver’s dialogue with her colleague was hindered — as are many critiques of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives — by a false premise that diversity and qualifications are mutually exclusive qualities, which therefore present an either/or situation. The premise presumes that a workforce can be either diverse or qualified, but not both. Crockett identified the faulty premise and used herself — and her qualifications — as a prime example to debunk it.
Crockett: There are those that would make some people believe because I happen to be Black and a woman that even though I can rattle off all the qualifications in the world, my blackness makes me unqualified pic.twitter.com/2BihHQoNRT
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 22, 2024
“It almost seemed as if you either get diversity or you get qualifications,” Crockett said. “It did not seem as if my colleague understood that my colleague understood that someone can be diverse and qualified. And it is why you have people like me who get very frustrated — not just in the halls of Congress but in general in this country.”
Crockett proceeded to rattle off her personal qualifications — two decades practicing law, her multiple degrees, her legislative experience — while refuting “this question of you’re either diverse or you’re qualified.”
Crockett then got personal, drawing a line in the sand on DEI and saying: “There are those that would make some people believe that because I happen to be Black and/or a woman that even though I can rattle off all the qualifications in the world, my blackness makes me unqualified.”
In response, Shriver asserted that he does not “subscribe to” that attitude at all and said OPM looks to “knock down barriers that are keeping qualified people like yourself from all across America from pursuing federal jobs.” Shriver also noted that diversity comes in many forms — beyond race and gender identities, and emphasized OPM’s ongoing efforts to draw more workers from rural regions.