Friday, March 29, 2024

Black Staffers Exit Biden White House as Administration Ignores Black Issues

Joe Biden (Drew Angerer-Getty Images)
U.S. President Joe Biden participates / Getty

*At least 21 Black staffers have left the White House due to a work environment that offers them little support from their superiors and few opportunities for promotion.

Black aides have adopted a term for the mass exodus: “Blaxit.”

“We’re here and we’re doing a lot of work but we’re not decision-makers and there’s no real path towards becoming decision-makers,” one current staffer told Politico. “There is no real feedback and there’s no clear path to any kind of promotions.” 

“They brought in a ton of black people generally to start without ever establishing an infrastructure to retain them or help them be successful,” another current official said. “If there is no clear infrastructure of how to be successful, you become just as invisible in this space than you would be if you were not in it.” 

READ MORE: Biden’s Emotional Speech After Buffalo Shooting: ‘White Supremacy is A Poison’ | WATCH

The White House

Here’s more from Politico:

The first big exit came in December, when Kamala Harris’ senior adviser and chief spokesperson Symone Sanders announced she was leaving, ultimately for a gig at MSNBC. Since then, Harris senior aides Tina Flournoy, Ashley Etienne and Vincent Evans, and public engagement head Cedric Richmond have left.

Public engagement aide Carissa Smith, gender policy aide Kalisha Dessources Figures, National Security Council senior director Linda Etim, digital engagement director Cameron Trimble, associate counsel Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo, chief of staff Ron Klain advisers Elizabeth Wilkins and Niyat Mulugheta, press assistant Natalie Austin, National Economic Council aides Joelle Gamble and Connor Maxwell, and presidential personnel aides Danielle Okai, Reggie Greer and Rayshawn Dyson have all departed too. Deputy White House counsel Danielle Conley and Council of Economic Advisers aide Saharra Griffin are among others planning to leave in the coming weeks, according to White House officials.

“The issues that are the highest priority for our community are no longer at the forefront of the administration’s priority list,” one current aide told Politico. “When 10 black people got killed at a grocery store [in Buffalo], it’s business as usual and no one stops to say to you, ‘Are you okay?’”

President Joe Biden signing Juneteenth bill into law – Gettyimages

“They gave us a mandate to execute on all the things that we promised and not only are we not delivering on that front, but then we’re not also delivering to the staff that came in on the basis of that promise,” another current official told the outlet. “People go home to their families or their communities, and what can they point to specifically? They can’t even point to their own experiences as positive.”

The White House is pushing back on the Politico report. In a statement sent to PEOPLE, Erica Loewe, the White House director of African American media, said: “Even though far more current and former staff told Politico about their positive experiences, Politico refused to communicate those findings to readers and instead devoted most of this article to comments that reinforce their narrative and present a disingenuous picture of the most diverse White House in history.”

The statement continued: “Instead of including their on-the-record sentiments, Politico singled out Black staff who left at a normal time for general turnover and then intentionally kept their own perspectives about their stories in the dark.”

You can read the full Politico report here

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