Top Obama aide pushes diversity in national security corps

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s national security adviser says America’s top diplomatic and defence brass needs to become more diverse.

Susan Rice says minorities still make up less than a fifth of senior U.S. diplomats, and less than 15 per cent of top military and intelligence officials. But minorities are 40 per cent of the population nationwide.

Rice is lamenting that too often the U.S. national security workforce is too “white, male and Yale.”

Speaking of her grandparents’ immigration from Jamaica and her father’s upbringing in segregated South Carolina, she says the nation’s diversity should be better reflected in its halls of power.

Rice was giving the commencement address Wednesday at the heavily Hispanic school of Florida International University.