Is Bush’s New Nominee for Foreign Assistance Czar A Bigot?

Under Secretary Fore
while at the U.S. Mint

"Sens. Obama, Menendez Probe AID Pick's Diversity Record" by Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, June 7, 2007.
Henrietta Holsman Fore, who was nominated by President Bush as the head of the U.S. foreign assistance programs, is described as having "made racially charged remarks about the work ethics of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and whites two decades ago, prompting two key Democratic senators yesterday to demand answers on her diversity record at the State Department." She was nominated to replace the deputy secretary of state for foreign assistance after he resigned in late April over an escort scandal.

The article states:

"Fore, a 1970 Wellesley graduate, told a college audience in 1987 that she tried to retain black employees as the president of a small wire-products firm near Los Angeles but that blacks preferred selling drugs to working in a factory. She also said that Hispanic workers were lazy, that white workers resented working with machines, and that Asians, while very productive, preferred professional or management jobs, according to accounts at the time in the Boston Globe and the New York Times. A number of students walked out of her lecture in protest. Fore, who then went by the name Holsman, appeared to inadvertently flame the controversy by trying to explain the context of her remarks in an interview with the Globe and a letter to the college newspaper."

According to her official biography from the Department of State, Under Secretary Fore has had a number of previous high-level government appointments under Republican administrations.