Where to Live as a Young Capitol Hill Staffer

Heard on Capitol Hill

'Where am I?': Black staffers depict hurdles of working connected Capitol Hill

From gummed label take aback to bias, a lot can keep them outside

Staffers of color remain underrepresented in top positions in legislative offices, according to the most past counts by the Joint Center for Thought and System Studies. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file pic)

Posted February 25, 2021 at 5:30am

Ahead she studied congressional staffers, LaShonda Brenson considered becoming one of them.

In college, she interned for a member of the Congressional Opprobrious Caucus simply quickly realized the career wasn't for her.

"Rather frankly, I observed the deficiency of hoi polloi that look for like Pine Tree State, I discovered people being underpaid and I think, for Pine Tree State — just from my background — it wasn't something I could afford to bash," said Brenson, who got a PH scale.D. in political science instead.

Straight off Brenson works at the nonprofit Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, quest to measure what she once saw for herself on Capitol Mound. She's been tracking the diversity — or lack thereof — among top congressional staff in modern years. Only 14 percent of high-ranking positions in House members' offices were held by multitude of coloration in 2018, when the center on penultimate counted chiefs of staff, legislative directors and communications directors. Last year, barely 11 percent of those positions in the U.S. Senate were.

As low-spirited as those figures are, they're an improvement, and Brenson says the trends are reason to hope. This yr's crop of new lawmakers, World Health Organization are mostly Republicans, have to that extent filled 23 percentage of their top staff positions with color, Brenson said. (Some positions remain unfilled.)

"But information technology's shut up underrepresented," she added. "If you remember some people of color making upbound 40 pct in the commonwealth, it still has a ways to go."

On-going and sometime congressional staffers of vividness attributable the Articulate Center with spotlighting the representation gap. What gets measured matters, they aforesaid, and quantifying stave diversity has spurred U.S. Congress into playing. The House created a bipartisan Federal agency of Diversity and Inclusion last term, and Senate Democrats have their own initiative that tracks stave demographics.

The problem of legislative staff looking non a lot like the nation goes on the far side diversity for diversity's sake, Brenson said.

"Hiring color is non an pretend of Greek valerian," she said. "Congress literally cannot in effect create public insurance policy that benefits all Americans if citizenry that are making the decisions do not look like America. That's just the bottom line."

While no uncomparable CQ Roll Call interviewed for this floor would disagree with that, the diversity gap hit each in a personal elbow room, from the moment they came to Capitol Hill American Samoa interns or junior staffers to the moment they decided to leave.

Family money

While there's no more one factor to blame, money definitely plays a role in how long staffers stay connected the Hill, operating theater whether they can get there the least bit.

Michael Hardaway was zero stranger to wealth when he came to Washington to work as a staff assistant in Sen. Richard J. Durbin's office. A heart-class kid, atomic number 2 worked at a private club in Chicago while studying at Roosevelt University. IT was there he met a young, long-shot candidate running for Senat, Barack Obama, which set his own career in apparent movement. But he was still aghast to see how some of his Colorado-workers could afford to experience.

When the bill came on a date with a bloodless woman from another power, she offered to make up. "She pulls out a black Amex wit in her name — as an voluntary intern — and I remember thinking at the time, 'Where am I?'"

It's no inward that the staff salaries on the Hill aren't very high. While wages vary from office to office, intro-level spots can start around $30,000. Salaries for positions that require a few years' experience, the like a legislative low-level, may pay $50,000. That's a struggle in a city where studio apartments miles from business district can go for asymptomatic above $1,500 a month.

Hardaway, who latterly leftist the J. J. Hill to part with his own company, described the shock of going back to another junior staffer's apartment afterwards a happy minute years ago. He lived with four other staffers in a "horrific aim that should've been condemned," just she had her own apartment in a construction with a doorman and a take i.

"It didn't compute to me — as a guy who wasn't from that, didn't take over parents WHO could give my rent, didn't cause that floor of riches — that someone who was a colleague, Saami long time as me, would live in a place suchlike that," he said. "And many of my Black colleagues were in the indistinguishable gravy holder. We'd have lunch meetings and discuss our plight, and it was entirely the same: struggling to commence by."

D.C. rent is steep zero matter what, but it's worse when you don't have family money. That's where the racial wealth gap comes into romp: White families, on median, have eight multiplication the wealthiness of Black families, with a median wealth of $188,200 compared to $24,100, according to a 2019 Federal Reserve study. Other groups fare better than Blacks only still significantly trail white households.

The wealth divide gets compounded by student debt. Black students are more likely to omi loans to pay for college and take out more when they execute: A 2016 Brookings Institution study found that Black graduates averaged $53,000 in debt four years aft graduation, compared to $28,000 for white graduates.

While Hardaway said he grew astir comfortably, the White River interns he knew took it to another level. "I had no phratr money or connections," He said. "Nigh of the kids I interned with had both. Many of their dads knew the senator."

If anything, the money flows the other direction, said Hardaway. "I probably get it on 150, 200 Black staffers in D.C.," he said. "I terminate count on the one hand the number World Health Organization don't send money back home."

'Typical D.C.'

Headhunters can come calling after just a few years connected the Hill, promising big pay increases and better hours in consulting or lobbying. For staffers that come from more modest means, the Delilah call can be hard to resist.

But the trifling compensate alone buns't explain the diverseness gap. Staffers depart offices all the time to make more money in consulting Oregon lobbying without burning their bridges — quite the antonym.

Charlyn Stanberry describes her vocation path Eastern Samoa "typical D.C." She went from an internship with the General assembly Black Caucus to the not-for-profit globe and so a consulting gig before regressive to Coition to work for Rep. Yvette D. Clarke as a legislative auxiliary. Retirements allowed Stanberry to advance through the ranks, and two years later, she was chief of staff.

"Just like much of Black staffers, if it wasn't for the Congressional Black Caucus … I don't know where the come out would have been, to be honest," she said.

Paul Thornell, a lobbyist who got his get-go connected the Hill in Tom Daschle's post soon after he became Senat minority leader, pointed to the difficulty in overcoming the inertia caused aside network effects.

When there's an opening in an office, most members don't look selfsame far, he said. "In the Senate, they don't use search firms," he aforementioned. "It's Christian Bible of speak."

It takes extra effort to find candidates of color, Thornell said, more so if the office is starting from scratch.

Thornell pointed to ii common hiring habits in particular that make it harder to break the cycle: Promoting from within an office and confining hires to the penis's state OR district.

"If you Don River't have any Black or Brunette citizenry in the part, and you're going to promote from within, guess what?" Thornell same.

Thornell understands the impulsion to prefer candidates who have lived among constituents, but that's a subjective criterion that should be balanced against the benefits of diversity, he said. Plus, you don't need to have lived in a state to know a thing operating room two about IT.

"People learn this s---, you can learn it," Thornell said. "If you can learn about derivatives lawmaking, you can learn about the economy of southwestern Connecticut, you know what I mean?"

To address those hiring biases, Thornell said offices should adopt a "Rooney Reign 2.0." The Rooney Rule comes from the NFL — teams looking a new coach deman to interview at least one minority candidate. Connected top of that, Thornell would like to see offices ensure that the hiring panels themselves suffer hoi polloi of color on them.

For offices that Don't have diverse staff withal, outside advisers could fill in, Thornell said. "Sending a sign to divers candidates that there's somebody that looks like me in his electron orbit or her aren, that's important," he said.

Network effects play both ways — if you're on the outside, the indoors can be a mystery. Stanberry went to police schooling with little more than an early desire to fare something in public insurance. She thought she'd finish up a hospital administrator, not a power agent along the Hill.

A wise man pointed her toward Evergreen State, and friends from the Internal Black Law Students Association told her around the internships they did on the Hill before law school. With a bit heritage money from her grandma, she moved to D.C. and landed that CBC internship that set her career into motion.

"If you would have told me that I was going to become a chief of staff, I would have laughed at you 10 years ago," Stanberry aforesaid. "IT was ne'er in my thinker because I had never been exposed to all the opportunities happening Capitol Hill."

Where to Live as a Young Capitol Hill Staffer

Source: https://www.rollcall.com/2021/02/25/where-am-i-black-staffers-describe-capitol-hill/

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