Portrait of Democratic Party's congressional interns

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/20/portrait-of-democratic-party.html

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The Ryan photo looks like he was at the Latter Day Saints general conference.

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I wonder how much of this has to do with the racial makeup of the Congressional districts themselves, and ultimately with gerrymandering.

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The juxtaposition of those two really does show that, yes, the Republican Party is the party of white people.

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It’s all related, sure, but also shows that people of color are less likely to be Republicans… or at least less likely to land (unpaid) choice gigs with the Republican power elite.

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It’s really more like a audience at a Mumford & Sons concert

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So, how hard could it be to get a Republican intern “class picture” like the one the Dems did, to properly shut down the narrative? There isn’t one here either:

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This strikes me as a similar answer to the question regarding the lower numbers of women employed in the tech sector; the lazy explanation is that there aren’t enough talented applicants, but that doesn’t really get at the root of the issue, does it?

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Obama’s 2009 White House interns look much more like Ryan’s. I don’t recall you criticizing that photo.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photos/pod-interns

Even if true, it appears that only white interns were interested in attending a Ryan speech.

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Also what non white person wants to go to a Paul Ryan speech? Hell I am so white I can blind people with it if I take off my shirt and I wouldn’t go see that.

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There is literally no way this is true. Every single one of those interns, Democratic or Republican, is there because they’re highly ambitious (I applied to be one, it is a highly selective process) - they’d love to be able to say they attended every lecture in the Summer Series.

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Is that seriously the best you can come up with? That’s a much smaller group and it STILL has far more people of color than the Ryan photo.

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Whatever the selection process it’s clear the Ryan photo doesn’t show a representative sample of interns from both parties. As noted, the Democratic interns simply aren’t that white.

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Probably not the best, but the easiest. (The photo is cropped so I’m not sure how many people are actually there.) Two is not exactly “far more” by any standard. But we all know how this works.

Anyway, maybe more whites are interested in that sort of work. I’m glad to see diversity but if BB is going to call out one side, they need to be fair. You all want fair, right? (Yeah didn’t think so, either)

I see at least five dark-skinned people in the Obama photo and several more of various other ethnicities (not counting the President). Try again.

This is a Fox News fallacy: if you ever notice a problem with the Republicans, you HAVE to call out the Democrats for the same thing whether they are guilty of it or not.

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I’d like the truth, actually.

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“Hey, it’s not MY fault if my message, platform and party have exactly zero appeal to non-white people.”

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Any whiter and they’d be in “those light aliens from Cocoon” territory.

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Khalaf’s statement that the interns in the picture work for both parties could mean anything from it being 50/50 to it being the case that the one black person sitting in the back right works for the democrats and Republican interns are even whiter than the picture shows.

Look at that picture of democratic interns. If you select from a group that looks like the Democratic interns randomly, what are the odds you get a group that looks like the Paul Ryan speech attendees?

This was not a random sampling of all interns that happened to come out almost entirely white. I don’t see how that idea could possibly be supported. Obviously there was self-selection (interns for Republicans are more likely to be interested in Paul Ryan than interns for democrats) if nothing else.

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