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Thanks for bringing out that important piece of information to bring parity to this story. Therefore, I can't imagine why the publication would print and release such a story without fully doing their homework first.
I read the Washington Post article, and viewed the writers sources--I followed the links provided by each as their source of data. The New Organizing Institute specifically states that they "guessed" on the minority status of people based on addresses, because nowhere on the final data report (I downloaded it) does it have the race of any of its people. That is an assumption, and stereotyping, that people with certain types of addresses are African-American.
The study by NOI is full of "most likely" and "could be" phrases which means it is guessing. I could easily say that most likely men who use the f word on a daily basis have small penises. That would be an assumption, and a research project many women would like to oversee.
My favorite part of the "study", which the Washington Post writer failed to report, was this part:
"We do not have enough information in front of us to say definitively exactly whats going on here -- it could be the case that women and ethnic minorities are being paid less for the same work on campaigns, though standardized campaign payscales make this less likely (for example, many if not most campaigns have a flat payscale for workers at a certain level, $30,000/yr for a field organizer, e.g.). More likely, members of these groups are being hired for lower-level jobs and not moving into leadership positions proportionally. Perhaps its both. Although the overall representation of ethnic minorities on Democratic campaigns appears healthy when the numbers are viewed from thirty thousand feet, the salary disparities suggest that this representation becomes greatly diminished as you move up the campaign ladder."
That paragraph is full of contradictions since it states an actual fact, and then shoots down that fact with a conspiracy assumption--less likely, more likely, suggest.
The study also bases its assumption of campaign worker rates on basic census numbers. It quotes its numbers from The Center for American Progress, which quotes work numbers, not specific job types. The NOI is creating a conspiracy theory out of "sources" that have nothing to do with its story, and the Washington Post writer jumped on the bandwagon without checking the sources of the NOI article. That is bad journalism.
The 12% of African-American quoted by the NOI as campaign workers is actually the number of African-Americans in the general workforce quoted by the Center for American Progress--it has nothing to do with campaigns.
According to the 2013 Census Bureau, 77% of the US population are white. 13% of the US population are African-American. In order to get proper stats, one must balance the numbers. That is pretty much a 1 to 6 ratio... 6 whites to every African-American.
Naturally there are going to be more whites than African-Americans in the workforce in every imaginable type of job. The only way to have a balanced workforce is to put 64% of whites out of work. That does not include the 10% of Hispanics, Asians, and others. To balance that, even African-Americans would have to be put out of work.
Research and learn--thinking critically is always fun too.