Senators Lead an Increasingly Diverse Nation. Their Top Aides Are Mostly White.

WASHINGTON — As senators chart a response to a deadly pandemic and an economic crisis that have disproportionately hurt Black Americans and other people of color, the top aides leading their offices are overwhelmingly white — far more so than the country as a whole.

Just 11 percent of top staff members in senators’ Washington offices — the key aides who draft legislation, coordinate public communications and vet nominees for executive branch posts and lifetime judgeships — are people of color, according to a new study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that pushes for greater racial diversity in government. By comparison, close to 40 percent of Americans are people of color, and 9 percent of senators.

Of the 100 members of the Senate, 72 — including Republicans and Democrats representing states with large minority populations, like Texas, Maryland, Georgia, Florida and Arizona — did not employ a single person of color as one of their top personal aides when researchers made their initial tallies in January 2020. Only four, all Democrats, employed more than one such top aide, defined by the study as chiefs of staff, legislative directors and communications directors in senators’ personal offices in Washington.

“People of color are underrepresented in various occupations, but a lack of diversity among top Senate staff warrants special attention because Senate decisions affect everyone in the nation,” LaShonda Brenson, the lead researcher, wrote in an introduction to the coming study, which was shared with The New York Times in advance of its release.