Trump's cabinet: All white males?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

People, look at this rationally. Let's assume that of the total pool of individuals qualified to work in a Republican administration, about 70% are white men. (I don't know what the true estimate is, but I assume it's around that bullpark given conservatives are disproportionately white and male). Therefore, we can assume that if there is no bias in the part of the transition team, the proportion of white male appointees would be not significantly different from our 70% ballpark. If you were to analyse the results with, like, a chi-squared test, and you find the number of appointed white males are significantly higher than our estimate you could make two different conclusions (a) the original estimate was off, and the representation of white males in the conservative recruitment pool is even more disproportionate relative to the population than expected or (b) there is bias on the part of the transition team.

Like, I know people are fond of meritocracy, but you have to listen to the rules of probability. If President-elect Sanders was coming to office and two-thirds of his nominees were from Vermont you might be suspicious that such an assortment would be the product of a biased executive, given that the available pool of Democratic nominees have no way near that many Vermonters. Likewise, arguing that an all male cabinet or all made advisors would be the result of pure meritocracy and coincidence strains credibility in an era where women are increasingly likely to be as qualified as men.

The good news for Trump is that I think it is more likely to be conclusion (a) that is correct rather than his administration explicitly -  Republicans and conservatives in general are old boys clubs. Vox lists 60 people in that article (potential cabinet picks + advisors) of which eight are women. That's 13% which is not especially different from the percentage of congressional republicans that are female (around 10%). We'll see what the numbers are like once they are whittled down of course.