As president-elect Donald Trump continues to fill out the list of men and women he would like to nominate for positions in his Cabinet and in his White House, taking note of the racial or gender make-up of this team would surely be anathema to most of its members. Diversity is not a subject on which they are typically keen to engage. They have little use for conversations about inclusiveness. They get squeamish at the mere mention of gender and race.

And yet, Trump’s would-be White House inner circle is more varied than one might expect from a candidate who spent a good portion of his campaign giving oxygen to racism, anti-Semitism and sexism. Trump has proposed more women for powerful roles in his administration than one might expect from someone convicted of paying off an adult-film actress in exchange for her silence about their sexual encounters and sexually abusing another woman in a speciality store’s dressing room. Trump wants to elevate more women than one might imagine given his history of demeaning them.

While White men dominate Trump’s roster so far, there are also those who identify as Cuban American, Indian American, Latina and Black. There are baby-boomers and millennials and Gen Xers. Folks who grew up in the South, out West, on the East Coast and in the middle of the country. They are gay and straight. They come from profound poverty and tremendous privilege. Trump’s picks are a reflection of the breadth of his support as well as proof that no generation, gender or ethnicity — no one — is inoculated against a candidate committed to mass deportations, robbing women of full bodily autonomy, bullying transgender youth and creating a society so committed to colorblindness that it refuses to see its own history in full.

Diversity is not synonymous with fairness, justice, competence or kindness.

To be clear, Trump aims to surround himself with people who will be devoted to him above all else, people who are committed to his agenda, people who are seen as embodying — through their physical carriage and the fit of their suit or their dress — the role that they are being asked to play in government. Those who might check all those boxes are a mixed lot. They aren’t all White men — Trump’s most devoted supporters — some of whom are steeped in the anxiety and grievances that have been documented by sociologists and political consultants for more than 30 years.

Women also make up a healthy portion of Trump’s administration wish list. They include former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard, South Dakota governor Kristi L. Noem, New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Pam Bondi, who was Florida’s attorney-general, and Susie Wiles, who managed Trump’s campaign. Many of these women have a certain hyper-feminine look, which counterbalances the Hollywood masculinity that Trump prefers and is evidenced by his choices of J.D. Vance as vice-president, Pete Hegseth for defence secretary, Doug Burgum for interior secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr for secretary of health and human services, and even Scott Bessent for treasury secretary. If some combination of strong jaws, sturdy hairlines, obscene self-confidence and a penchant for public bullying, rather than empathy, serve as qualifications for the men in Trump’s orbit, many of the women can be equally mean and just as self-assured. But what their jaws might lack in strength, their hair and eyelashes make up for in length.

As for Wiles, with her short grey hair and aversion to the spotlight, she has been chosen for the position of chief of staff. She need not reflect the purveying look. Wiles won’t be representing Trump. She will be doing a job, one for which her skill set of organisation, authority and loyalty may well be suited. And Linda McMahon, the GOP donor asked to lead the Department of Education? She doesn’t even really count. After all, hers is the department that Trump is keen on demolishing.

Taking in the full sweep of Trump’s choices to help him run the country is a lesson in contradictions and tensions, in the complexity of human nature and the siren call of power. They test the assumptions one might make about people and how they are shaped by their identity, their experiences and their circumstances. Does personal loss make one demand empathy in leaders? Does having known want make someone value generosity? Does Christianity lead one to seek out those with an open heart?

The men and women on Trump’s staffing list have been tested by trauma. Howard Lutnick, who Trump wants to lead the Commerce Department, heads New York investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald. On September 11, 2001, the majority of Cantor Fitzgerald employees, including Lutnick’s brother, were killed in the World Trade Centre attacks. They have known poverty. Vance famously wrote about the struggles of his childhood in Hillbilly Elegy. Scott Turner, who has been tapped to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is listed as an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas, whose members believe that all human beings are created in the image of God.

Nonetheless, they are stepping up to support a candidate who has demonstrated little empathy over his lifetime of 78 years. They are pledging their allegiance to someone who validates the frustrations of the working class but caters to the tax-policy desires of billionaires. They are offering their fealty to a man whose candidacy some considered a message from God, but who regularly disregards the Golden Rule.

Much has been made of Trump treating his administration like a reality show and his choices for top White House positions are akin to casting decisions. If his picks are approved by the Senate, this second term will be populated with a cast that does, in fact, look like America. Or at least resembles it.

But it will also be a reminder than looks can be misleading and diversity is no substitute for virtue.

• Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts. A 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, she has also worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press