When They Say 'Harris Is A DEI Hire,' They Mean 'Only White Men Are Qualified'

Just like when they claim it causes collapsing bridges and airplane malfunction.

Kamala Harris, Wikimedia

For the last year or so, Republicans and their “conservative” press have been blaming every single thing that has gone wrong in the country or in their own personal lives on “DEI” — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. Did a bridge collapse? DEI is to blame! Did a student beat up a girl who severely bullied her? Obviously DEI! Trump was almost assassinated? Gotta be DEI! Airplane malfunction? DEI! Crowdstrike outage? Well, that’s definitely DEI. Bad hair day? Hangnail? Probably also DEI, somehow.

But let’s be real. “DEI” in this context is just the latest in a never-ending parade of terms Republicans don’t fully understand but use to rile up their base. Previously, they’ve done it with woke, critical race theory, cultural Marxism, Affirmative Action — I could go on. Every time one loses their punch, they come up with another. This one is particularly insidious, however, because the core of the argument is very specifically “Horrible things happen when you hire women and people of color instead of white men.”

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In reality, DEI just refers to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practices and training in education and workplaces, with the goal of making these spaces more fair and more pleasant for all involved (also, let’s be real, to avoid lawsuits). In the conservative imagination, however, they are nefarious schemes in which fabulously qualified straight white men are rejected in favor of “mediocre” women and men from marginalized communities — for no reason other than a desire to pander to the Left.

One would think that if giant corporations were so eager to pander to us that they’d be willing to lose money, they’d pay their workers more fairly — but I guess things just don’t work that way!

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee is one of the many Republicans currently trying to make “Kamala Harris is a DEI hire” a thing.

“Biden said, first off, he said he’s gonna hire a Black female for president — just skipped over … what about white females, what about any other group. Just, when you go down that route, you take mediocrity, and that’s what they have right now as a Vice President,” Burchett said in an interview with CNN on Monday. “100 percent, she was a DEI hire. He said he was gonna hire … and her record is abysmal at best.”

How much do you want to bet that Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee cannot actually name a single thing about Harris’s record? I mean, given that he misquoted Biden — who said only, in one debate, that he would choose a female vice-president (without mentioning race or any other attributes), and who said that in order to win favor with people who were simply not so keen on nominating yet another old white guy as president.

"If I'm elected president, my Cabinet, my administration will look like the country, and I committed that I will pick a woman to be my vice president," Biden said in a March 2020 debate, adding, “There are a number of women qualified to be president," which is factually correct.

However, even if he did say, specifically, that he was going to select a Black woman — does Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee believe that there is not a single Black woman in all the land who is qualified to be vice president? Because it sure sounds like that’s what he’s saying. If Biden had said he planned to choose a vice president from the South or from a swing state, in order to broaden his appeal, would that have resulted in “mediocrity”? Because “broadening a presidential candidate’s appeal” is usually the whole purpose of a vice president. (Well, that and taking over should the president step aside, of course.)

Also — sorry, but absolutely no one from the party of Dan Motherfucking Quayle has any business lecturing any of us on vice presidential “mediocrity.”

You will note that no one had to point to Dan Quayle’s race or gender in order to shine a light on his mediocrity — there was material a-plenty! And yet, when it comes to Harris, the GOP is fixated on her gender and race as the only “proof” they need of her so-called mediocrity.

If they really want to know exactly why organizations need to implement things like DEI in order to ensure that women and people from marginalized backgrounds get a fair shake in hiring and are treated fairly on the job, they only need to hold up a mirror while explaining to whom, exactly, Harris — who has been elected a large-city district attorney, the attorney general for the state of California, a United States senator, and the vice president of the United States of America — is meant to be mediocre by comparison. Is it Donald Trump? Is it JD Vance? Is it George W. Bush? Because some might say that getting a job because of ‘who your daddy is’ is a form of Affirmative Action for white guys. (Me, I would say that.)

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Oh! Or is it Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, whose major accomplishments include a proposal to legalize eating roadkill in his state without first notifying the county game warden of one’s intent to eat roadkill, failing to report a $10,000 payment from an electronics company on his campaign finance forms while he was a state senator, and this dazzling response to the Covenant School shooting in 2023:

It's a horrible, horrible situation, and we're not going to fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, 'Buddy,' he said, 'if somebody wants to take you out, and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.'

I suppose that is slightly more eloquent than a shrug emoji.

But, as they say — never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake, and if Republicans want to make this whole darn race about how straight white men are the only people truly qualified to hold jobs, or about how Kamala Harris is an evil Jezebel witch, then more power to them. Surely all of this will go over very well, right along with banning no-fault divorces and throwing all of the porn stars in prison.