WASHINGTON: A senior Indian-American diplomat has quit the US state department alleging racial and sexist bias in a Trump administration trend that she says involves "the exclusion of minorities from top leadership positions in the state department and embassies abroad".Uzra Zeya, a US-born diplomat daughter of Indian immigrants, resigned from the state department in spring after serving more than 25 years, but she has only now begun giving insights into the turmoil in Foggy Bottom, where she says there is purge of minorities, and suggests it is back to the time of a "pale male club" before America diversified rapidly."In the first five months of the Trump administration, the department's three most senior African-American career officials and the top-ranking Latino career officer were removed or resigned abruptly from their positions, with white successors named in their places. In the months that followed, I observed top-performing minority diplomats be disinvited from the secretary's senior staff meeting, relegated to FOIA duty (well below their abilities), and passed over for bureau leadership roles and key ambassadorships," Zeya wrote in Politico last week, chronicling the eclipse of minorities after Trump became the president.It is not just a matter of turnover among a few top officials, Zeya says. According to her analysis of public data from the American Foreign Service Association, 64 per cent of Trump's ambassadorial nominees so far have been white non-Hispanic males, a 7 percentage point increase from the eight years of the Obama administration."President Trump stands out from his six predecessors in his failure so far to nominate a single African-American female ambassador; African-American women made up 6 per cent of all ambassadors under President Barack Obama and 5 per cent under President George W Bush, who had two African-American secretaries of state. Meanwhile, from September 2016 to June 2018, the share of African-Americans in the Senior Foreign Service-the top ranks from which most career ambassadorial nominees are drawn-dropped from 4.6 percent to 3.2 percent,'' she wrote.Zeya says a new glass ceiling is also thinning the ranks of female ambassadors, who represent 26 per cent of Trump nominees so far, 2 percentage points above the overall share in the Bush administration but a 7 percentage point drop from the Obama administration.''A 25-year upward trend that saw the percentage of female ambassadors increase with every administration since President Bill Clinton has now been reversed," she wrote.Zeya's accounts are challenged by the Mike Pompeo-led state department, whose spokesperson says the secretary "has placed incredible emphasis on staffing up the state department and increasing diversity as well as reinvigorating and restoring the finest diplomatic corps in the world".Zeya last served abroad as the charge d'affaires and deputy chief of mission at US Embassy in Paris from 2014 to 2017, where, her bio says, "she led the US response to three major terror attacks and forged unprecedented cooperation with France in combating terrorism in Africa and the middle east, countering Russian aggression and malign influence in Europe; mobilizing international action against climate change; and orchestrating President Donald Trump 's July 2017 visit to Paris".Countering Russian aggression and malign influence in Europe and mobilizing international action against climate change have not exactly been Trump's priorities. In fact, that may well have led to Zeya's leaving."In my own case, I hit the buzz saw that Team Trump wielded against career professionals after leading the US Embassy in Paris through three major terrorist attacks over three years and after planning President Trump's Bastille Day visit. Upon returning to Washington, as accolades for the president's visit poured in, I was blocked from a series of senior-level jobs, with no explanation. In two separate incidents, however, colleagues told me that a senior state official opposed candidates for leadership positions-myself and an African-American female officer-on the basis that we would not pass the 'Breitbart test'", she writes."One year into an administration that repudiated the very notion of America I had defended abroad for 27 years, I knew I could no longer be a part of it, and I left government earlier this year," she explained.Zeya is one of several diplomats of Indian-origin who rose through the ranks of the State Department in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama era resulting in some of them being nominated to ambassadorships. Among them are Geeta Pasi, who has just completed her tour as the US ambassador to Chad and has been named Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of African Affairs; and Atul Keshap, who has finished a stint as the U.S ambassador to Sri Lanka, and returned to become Vice Chancellor at the National Defense University for the College of International Security Affairs.The acme of this American ethnic diversity outreach as far as India is concerned came in 2014-2015 when both the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia (with oversight on the India portfolio) and the US ambassador to New Delhi, were persons of Indian origin: Nisha Desai Biswal and Richard Verma, respectively.