NAACP wants Biden to create a Cabinet-level civil rights envoy

The head of the NAACP planned to push President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to create the role of civil rights czar, following a model Biden has already established in naming John Kerry to a Cabinet-level position as a climate envoy, during a virtual meeting Tuesday.

The proposal was to come during a virtual meeting Biden and Harris held with the leaders of civil rights organizations Tuesday in Delaware. It’s part of an effort by Black leaders, who delivered Biden to victory in the Democratic primary, to hold him to his promise to nominate the most diverse Cabinet in history.

“We oftentimes as a country talk about the reaction to history as opposed to talking about the opportunity of the future as it relates to diversity and equity. And that’s what we want to lean into,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview before the meeting in which he previewed the proposal.

In a statement, the NAACP called the position it is proposing the “National Advisor on Racial Justice, Equity and Advancement.”

Johnson said the call for a civil rights czar is modeled after corporations that have tapped top-level diversity and inclusion officers, and that those posts have been most effective when those officers report directly to the company’s leader.

He wouldn’t name specific individuals he’d like to see named to such a post, saying he first wanted to “see if there’s buy-in by this administration so that we can really see the position come to life.”

Johnson said Black leaders want to see Biden select Black nominees for top positions in government and choose an overall pool of political appointees that includes more Black people than former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama selected. Clinton left office with Black people in 6.2% of political appointee positions, and Obama left with Black people in 11.8% of those spots, Johnson said.

Johnson said it’s too soon to assess how fully Biden has lived up to his pledge for the most diverse Cabinet in history. “It’s still early. I would like to give that assessment once we have a complete picture,” he said.

Last week, Biden promised a Cabinet with “significant diversity” after hearing frustrations from the NAACP and other civil rights groups that Biden had not selected Black nominees to lead the State and Treasury departments.

“I’m not going to tell you now exactly what I’m doing in any department, but I promise you, it’ll be the single most diverse cabinet, based on race, color, based on gender, that’s ever existed in the United States of America,” Biden told reporters Friday.

Since then, Biden chose retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the former commander of US Central Command, to be his secretary of defense. And he tapped California Attorney General Xavier Beccera to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, after the Congressional Hispanic Caucus voiced frustrations over his team’s handling of another candidate, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for the post.

On Monday, more than 1,000 influential Black women signed a letter urging Biden and Harris to consider and appoint more Black women to hold Cabinet positions. One person singled out in the letter, Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, is set to be nominated to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, two people familiar with the transition told CNN, a decision that would add another African American woman to the ranks of Biden’s Cabinet.

Asked in a news conference after Tuesday’s meeting about prospects for attorney general, several of the civil rights leaders said they want to see Biden select a Black appointee or someone with what Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called “a clear and bold record when it comes to civil rights and racial justice.”

Attendees, though, said they did not offer or discuss names of potential nominees.

Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, specifically named former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who once helmed the Justice Department’s civil rights division, and Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general. One person whose name did not come up, but who prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four Black girls, is outgoing Alabama Sen. Doug Jones.

Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, said he was “looking for the profile of Eric Holder, and a preference for an African American, civil rights-focused attorney general.”

Morial also told reporters after the meeting that the civil rights leaders “heard the reaffirmation of a commitment by President-elect Biden to make history when it comes to appointments” by selecting more Black and Latino people for his administration than any before.

“We pushed very hard on that. We will continue to push very hard on that. It is central to, we think, his ability to make progress on racial justice,” Morial said.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.