Over the weekend, House Speaker Paul Ryan posted a selfie with the 2016 class of Republican Party interns and almost immediately the image was met with backlash. The photo showed almost no racial diversity.
This week, the Democratic Party interns reciprocated with their own photo. It showed the opposite as the Republican Party — a level of diversity that better represents the actual US population.
My intern Audra Jackson led Democratic Interns in their own selfie 2day showing #DemInternDiversity#DemInternSelfiepic.twitter.com/83UcIOKS5s
— US Rep E.B.Johnson (@RepEBJ) July 19, 2016
The two photos seem to reflect the nature of US politics. And the numbers support this conclusion.
White US citizens, especially those in southern states, favor the Republican party and the three major minority groups in the US — Black, Hispanic, and Asian — favor the Democratic party. The gaps are enormous.
This divide has only been exacerbated by the current presidential election, with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump alienating Hispanic, Black, and Muslim voters with various comments.
The Republican National Convention, currently ongoing in Cleveland, Ohio, further highlighted the divide.
And the disparities go far beyond politics, or, to put it differently, they encompass everything that politics is meant to address.
Neighborhoods, schools, professions, interactions in public, opportunities are all still shaped by discrimination and inequalities in the US, long after such disparities were meant to end.
The two selfies were meant to celebrate interns — and they do — but they’re also a stark reminder of the political divide in the US.
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