House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan is outraged about the dozen staffers who accompanied U.S. Agency for International Development Director Rajiv Shah to a recent meeting on Capitol Hill. You should understand, though, that Conyers was not upset because Shah brought too many staffers along for the meeting with the 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Nor was he upset because any of those staffers displayed a lack of competence. No, Conyers was “alarmed and chagrined” because, as he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a subsequent letter, “none of the approximately dozen staff he brought with him were African American.”

Conyers further informed Clinton that “this is so serious an error in judgment that it warrants his immediate demotion to a subordinate position at AID.” That Conyers expects Clinton and her boss in the White House not only to demote Shah, but also to hand out federal jobs on the basis of skin color was made clear in his declaration in the same letter that “it is well known that there has long been an under-representation of minorities in key positions within the State Department. I am confident this administration will immediately begin addressing this problem.”