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In 2017, as the media ran out of synonyms for “implosion” in describing Rex Tillerson’s tenure as secretary of state, a quieter trend unfolded in parallel: the exclusion of minorities from top leadership positions in the State Department and embassies abroad.

In the first five months of the Trump administration, the department’s three most senior African-American career officials and the top-ranking Latino career officer were removed or resigned abruptly from their positions, with white successors named in their places

64 percent of Trump‘s ambassadorial nominees so far have been white non-Hispanic males, a 7 percentage point increase from the eight years of the Obama administration. President Trump stands out from his six predecessors in his failure so far to nominate a single African-American female ambassador; African-American women made up 6 percent of all ambassadors under President Barack Obama and 5 percent under President George W. Bush, who had two African-American secretaries of state. Meanwhile, from September 2016 to June 2018, the share of African-Americans in the Senior Foreign Service—the top ranks from which most career ambassadorial nominees are drawn—dropped from 4.6 percent to 3.2 percent