Is diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a good thing or a bad thing? We have been told by its supporters that it is a good thing, but now that it is being used against Kamala Harris, it is now a bad thing.
MSNBC commentator Joy Reid says, “DEI is actually a good thing,” but hastens to add that it is racist to say that Harris is a DEI hire. Wouldn’t that suggest that DEI is itself racist? By contrast, no one would say that merit is a good thing, but it is racist to say that those hired on this basis are racists.
University of Tennessee law professor Glenn H. Reynolds notes that “Diversity is code for specified hiring and promotion quotas based on race, gender, sexuality and similar factors. In practice, it boils down to discrimination.” Everyone knows this is true, yet there is pushback against those who say Harris is a DEI hire. There shouldn’t be.
When he was running for president four years ago, Joe Biden said in March 2020 that he was going to pick a woman for his vice president if he were to win the nomination. That’s a quota—it automatically eliminates roughly half the adult population from consideration because of their sex. In July, when he was the presumptive nominee, he said he was considering four black women to be his running mate. Now 94 percent of the population was eliminated from consideration.
In other words, Harris was chosen because she is a black woman. So why are DEI fans upset when this is pointed out? Susan Rice, the former UN ambassador, said it was “incredibly insulting” to say Harris is a “DEI hire.” Similarly, Maxwell Frost, a Democratic congressman, said, “Whenever you hear DEI, I want you to think about the N-word.”
Do these people really think Harris was chosen because she was the best candidate? New York State Attorney General Letitia James seems to think so. She called her “an overachiever.” She did not say what she has achieved. We do know that she came from a privileged background yet failed her first bar exam. That put her in a special category: more than 72 percent of those who took it passed.
It didn’t matter in the end. Even though she flunked the test, she was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County. How many white people are hired for such a job after they fail the bar?
Before the Supreme Court struck down quotas, DEI was called affirmative action. Michelle Obama knows all about this. She was 32nd in her high school class. It didn’t matter in the end. She was admitted to Princeton University. One of her classmates finished 7th but she was rejected by all of the Ivy League schools she applied to. She was white.
If a baseball player who broke a major league record were to defend taking performance-enhancing drugs, but took umbrage at those who mocked his achievement, we would laugh him off the stage. Ditto for the conflicted champions of DEI. It’s too late to spin it.
