Clinton’s Cabinet

Thank you for your chart breaking down President-elect Clinton’s Cabinet appointees demographically (Dec. 25). Within the context of a story on Clinton’s attempts to achieve diversity among his chief advisers, this was a useful contribution.

However, your chart also was a handy illustration of just how far this country has come in judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their characters. Why not a chart ranking the Cabinet designees according to their intellectual firepower, organizational skills or chances of success? Perhaps those things don’t matter so much as appointing a Cabinet “that looks like” an increasingly race-obsessed America.

To take this matter to its logical conclusion, your demographic analysis should have specified whether “Anglo males” truly were Anglo-Saxon and not, say, Balkan whites. Were the Hispanic males of Iberian, Central or South American descent? And were Clinton’s black appointees the progeny of American slaves or those from the Caribbean? You also failed to mention that Clinton did not appoint any Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans or Eskimo-Americans.

As a black American of Costa Rican ancestry with a great-grandfather from Canton, China, your demographic chart left me wondering if anyone truly will speak for me in President Clinton’s Cabinet.

DEROY MURDOCK

Culver City