Wednesday's cabinet reshuffle gave us a glimpse into what the Scottish Government's next five years will look like.

Mostly it will be the same old faces. Personnel have been rejigged and, perhaps more interestingly, jobs have been redefined. But the First Minister has more or less stuck with what she knows.

That's not to say fresh blood hasn't been injected into the ranks. Four MSPs will make their debuts as junior ministers, while two former junior ministers, Fergus Ewing and Derek Mackay, have been promoted to cabinet.

But in the astute balancing act Sturgeon has performed in selecting her new senior team, she has missed an opportunity to promote Pollok MSP Humza Yousaf.

Yousaf, former Europe and external affairs minister and now reassigned to transport, is an outstanding politician, hugely popular, and has for many years been tipped as a rising star.

He also happens to be a Muslim and the product of a Kenyan mum and Pakistani dad. I bring this up because Scotland has never had a cabinet minister of Kenyan descent or one of Pakistani extraction. In fact, we've never had a member of any ethnic minority community sit at the ministerial top table. Nor, since we're at it, have we ever had a Muslim cabinet secretary.

Scotland, that progressive beacon with no time for intolerance, can't rustle up a single non-white cabinet member in 17 years of devolution. While the UK, led by the dastardly, immigrant-baiting Tories, has Sajid Javid as business secretary and sees Priti Patel, a senior minister, sit in on Cabinet meetings.

It's admittedly not an entirely fair comparison. The 2015 census revealed that 13% of people in the UK belong to an ethnic minority group, close to 15% in England alone. With Javid the only ethnic minority MP in a full Cabinet position, that puts representation among senior ministers at a paltry 4.5%.

Scotland's ethnic minority community is around 4% of its population. For the second election in a row, just two ethnic minority MSPs have been voted into Holyrood -- Yousaf and Labour MSP Anas Sarwar.

Parliamentarians from ethnic minorities constitute a mere 1.6% of Holyrood's make-up, so it's perhaps understandable that successive first ministers have failed to appoint more diverse ministries.

In 2007 there was only one MSP from an ethnic minority background. In 1999 and 2003 -- zero.

That ethnic minorities aren't being adequately represented in our political life is nothing new and the reasons for it are myriad. Nor should politics be singled out. Many other professions -- journalism included -- have a long way to go.

It also goes without saying that the best person for any job -- especially one as important as a cabinet role -- is the best person for the job.

But promoting Humza Yousaf would not have been gesture politics.

Yousaf took on a tricky, slightly esoteric brief in 2012 -- with much of his role in Europe and international development pertaining to reserved matters -- and made it his own, championing issues like climate justice, human rights and European Union membership, as well as taking a leading role in Scotland's "welcoming" response to the refugee crisis, which was warmly praised by the UN.

Has Yousaf proved himself to the same degree as, say, Derek Mackay? Perhaps not. Then again, he hasn't had the same opportunities.

But soft-on-fracking, anti-equal marriage Fergus Ewing got the nod, moving up to cabinet secretary for rural affairs. This, of course, was to get him away from the energy brief and keep the Greens placated.

Ewing is an experienced minister -- there's no doubt about that. So is Roseanna Cunningham, the first dedicated cabinet secretary for the environment and climate change, also incorporating land reform into her brief.

In 2006, Cunningham tried unsuccessfully to prevent gay couples from being able to adopt children. In 2014, both Nationalist MSPs voted in opposition to same-sex marriage.

I don't bring up Ewing and Cunningham's positions on gay rights to make personal references. I have no doubt their views are strongly and sincerely held. I bring them up because they call into question Nicola Sturgeon's progressive credentials. The First Minister had a choice between capable but socially conservative ministers and someone who speaks to the future of the SNP and of our country.

Yousaf is a highly talented minister of four years' experience. In that time he spearheaded Scotland's campaign to push climate justice up the political agenda both within the UK and internationally. Why not bump him up to secretary for the environment and climate change?

The First Minister passed on Yousaf in favour of trusted old hands and, you might argue, fair enough. Cabinet secretaries should not be appointed on the basis of their positions on gay marriage or feel-good symbolism. But governing in a modern democracy is about more than who makes the best departmental branch manager. It's also about the message you send.

This is already implicitly recognised by Sturgeon in her determination to appoint 50/50 gender-balanced cabinets. The irony, as commentator Lesley Riddoch pointed out, is that this 50/50 quota may have been what deprived Scotland of its first ethnic minority cabinet minister.

Sturgeon's reshuffle was, in many ways, a performance of consummate skill, showcasing her agility and problem-solving as a political operator. Problem ministers were dispatched from problem posts and thorny briefs were chopped up into more manageable chunks.

And Humza Yousaf was moved to transport, nothing to be sneered at in itself. (Derek Mackay and Keith Brown before him went from transport to the cabinet.) But both for his dynamism and effectiveness, as well as what it would have meant for Scotland's underrepresented ethnic minorities, this is the week that Yousaf should have made the step up.

Comment by Dan Vevers, a freelance journalist who has written for CommonSpace and Bella Caledonia. Most recently he was STV's digital election reporter during the Holyrood campaign.