“Since 2003…the criminal section within the Civil Rights Division has not hired a single black attorney to replace those who have left. Not one. As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section — only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 — even though the size of the staff has more than doubled.”
ABC’s Washington D.C. affiliate WJLA-TV, who discovered the lack of diversity, reports:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/05/crdoj532.320.240.flv]
As TPMmuckraker’s Paul Kiel points out, “The Justice Department responded to WJLA-TV’s story by saying that the Civil Rights Division as a whole is the most diverse office in the Department of Justice.”