President Bush has nominated Henrietta Holsman Fore (right) to a State Dept. position in which she would head, among other things, the department’s human resources activities. But Think Progress reports that Ms. Fore got into trouble in the late 1980’s over racist comments she made in a public forum. (She even reiterated the comments in her published “apology” for the racist comments!) Here’s how the New York Times covered the incident:
A Wellesley College trustee’s remark that blacks preferred pushing drugs to working in a factory has precipitated an emotional debate on this bucolic campus already grappling with charges of racial insensitivity…
The trustee, Henrietta Holsman, a 1970 graduate of Wellesley who runs a manufacturing concern in Los Angeles, resigned from the board last weekend after apologizing for her comments, which also cast aspersions on the work ethic of Hispanic and white employees. But in a letter to the college newspaper, Ms. Holsman reiterated her statement that she had trouble keeping black assembly-line workers from going “…back to the street to earn more money … selling drugs.”
In her lecture, Ms. Holsman also said she had found Hispanic workers to be lazy, white workers resentful of having to work with machines, and Asians, while very productive, likely to move on to professional or management jobs. [NYT, 2/12/87]
Ms. Fore is currently director of the U.S. Mint.
