209. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Equal Employment Opportunity (Burroughs) to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management (Read)1
SUBJECT
- Minorities Assigned Overseas
Pursuant to Congressman Rangel’s complaint to President Carter concerning a lack of minorities at overseas posts,2 we have compiled an overall statistical picture as of December 31, 1977. Copy attached. There is some truth to the Congressman’s allegation that minorities are not very visible in top-level and other policy-making roles. More than one third (38.5%) of the minorities serving at overseas posts are in support roles (secretarial and communications) as of the end of last year.
The back-up papers used to develop the attached report show that some posts have no minorities at all. At least one large post has only three minorities—all in the code room. At several posts, all of the minorities are in the Consular sections or Administrative sections. Situations like these probably explain why the Congressman saw so few minorities on his round-the-world trip. At those posts visited by Rangel where we do have minorities, it is regrettable that the posts were not more sensitive in recognizing his interests.
The back-up research also showed that many Asian-Americans are assigned to EA, Blacks to AF, and Hispanics to ARA. On the surface this looks like stereotyping; yet, if our open assignment system is working, I would grant that some of these assignments may be the personal choices of the employees involved. Of the four Foreign Service Native Americans, two are overseas—the only FSO is in ARA and one of two FSS’s is in NEA.
Finally, even if Bureaus/posts did create a demand to make their staffing profiles more representative of the U.S. population, which a few have done, our supply is inadequate. As you recall, we have only 159 minority FSO’s—not even one per post—and only 596 minorities in all FS pay plans. Obviously once again, intensified recruitment and [Page 878] intensified hire are the answers. (By the way, I suspect that a comparable study on women would reveal a similar situation.)
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Records of the Under Secretary for Management (M), 1977–1978, Box 9, Chron March 1978. No classification marking. Copies were sent to Barnes, Clark, Douglas Bennett (H), Robert Sayre (S/IG), Terence Todman, Vest, Holbrooke, Alfred Atherton (NEA), and Moose.↩
- See Document 205.↩
- No classification marking. Source: PER/MGT. Asterisks denote that only posts/missions with minorities were counted.↩