Obama Campaign Desperately Searches for Black Staffers

The Obama administration, despite supposedly advocating for more diversity in politics, appears to be having trouble actually making that diversity a reality where its own campaign is concerned. Politico reports that the campaign has recently begun making increasingly desperate overtures toward its allies in the hopes of finding talented young African Americans who can work on the campaign. These have included everything from supposedly urgent emails entreating supports to help them "find qualified, African American candidates" for staff positions to outreach to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in the hopes of transitioning CBC staffers into the White House:

The race to stock up on black talent is a welcome development among Washington’s African-American power elite — and one that critics say is three years late in coming. The cynical take, offered up by black Democratic sources outside Obama’s camp: The president and his aides have focused their attention on hiring more African-Americans because they are worried about black turnout on Election Day.

It’s not that anyone expects black voters to suddenly rush to Mitt Romney — they won’t — but African-American turnout could be pivotal in several swing states Obama won in 2008 that show signs of being more competitive in 2010 because of shifts among white independents. Florida, North Carolina and Virginia rank in the top 10 states in total African-American population; and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are in the top 15.[...]

“I think this administration is expected to have the greatest diversity program just given the fact that President Obama is the first African-American president, and he’s not run from issues of diversity,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “The question would be ‘What do the facts say about it?’ and I think they would be the best judge of those numbers. You can always do better. And this administration is no different. You can talk diversity, which is good, but a better barometer is whatever the facts say.”

These efforts may make more sense in light of the embarrassing recent discovery that the Obama campaign's Tumblr account - which features pictures of the staff behind the scenes - shows that very staff to be lily white.