The Daily Caller has hinted that President Barack Obama could be violating civil rights laws at the federal level because of the makeup of his campaign staff. A recent photo from Obama’s campaign headquarters shows a campaign staff that is very close to being all-white and includes roughly 100 people. Stefanie Brown, the African-American Outreach Head for the campaign, sent a memo out to find ‘qualified’ black staffers. The memo was sent to state offices in April. There are only two African-American people in the photo, at the very back of it, which falls well under the national population of 13 percent and the 33 percent in Chicago.
“Were I the general counsel of an employer in Chicago with the workforce in the picture … I would be concerned,” said Charles Shanor. Shanor is a law professor at Emory University. Shanor also worked previously as the former general counsel for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. “The workforce is overwhelmingly made up of young white males [and is] a demographic profile that could raise red flags under both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.”
The former Acting Dean at Widener University and current law professor, Michael J. Goldberg, said, “An underrepresentation of a particular group is a red flag … but underrepresentation by itself is not proof of a violation.”