Diversity and Perdue's Cabinet

Gov. Beverly Perdue's Cabinet includes only one first.

The state's first female governor has appointed the state's first female secretary of the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Linda Wheeler Hayes.

As noted previously, many of the remaining glass ceilings for women in North Carolina involve law enforcement positions such as Attorney General, Correction Secretary or Crime Control Secretary.

(In addition, there has never been a female secretary of Environment and Natural Resources or Transportation.)

Perdue's Cabinet includes one other woman — Cultural Resources Secretary Linda Carlisle — but that's not news. Six of the seven secretaries who have served since that department was created in 1971 have been women.

Meantime, the Cabinet includes three black men: Correction Secretary Al Keller, Revenue Secretary Kenneth Lay and Crime Control Secretary Reuben Young.

There have been previous black secretaries of all three departments, especially Crime Control and Correction, as well as the departments of Administration and Environment and Natural Resources.

In all, Perdue has essentially tied former Gov. Mike Easley's 2001 Cabinet, which also had only five white male appointees and was described as "perhaps the most diverse" in North Carolina history.