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As Chicago’s very own President Elect starts choosing who will work with him, it comes as no surprise that many advocacy groups are pushing for a more diverse administration.  A New America Media article describes the conflict between the nature of Washington D.C.’s reliance on insiders (many of whom served during the Clinton administration) and the message of change that was so salient during Obama’s campaign.

While the choices for upper-level positions are more publicized, some feel that lower-level positions may be more critical:

Falcon believes that lower level positions are in some ways more critical for building diverse leadership, especially for the future. Latinos in particular are the most underrepresented racial-ethnic group in the federal government, he noted, making up less than 8 percent of its workforce despite being over 13 percent of the civilian labor force.

“The true test of how inclusive Obama will be of Latinos during the transition will come in second- and third-tier positions in the federal agencies, in positions like undersecretary, program directors and so on,” Falcon said. “Latinos will have to take a hard and cold view of this administration and be ready to hold his feet to the fire. ‘Si, se puede’ needs to now become, ‘¡Y si no, maceta!’ [’And if not, we’ll chop your head off!’]

That’s certainly a strong choice of words and I hope that the message is less of an ultimatum than it sounds and more of a reminder to make sure that this administration truly represents the people it was elected to serve.