Kamala & the ‘DEI’ slur

How the Right Still Gets Race Wrong

In a recent New York Post column, business writer Charles Gasparino decides to take the lead in an early slam piece on Kamala Harris. Now, there are any number of ways for a critic to go after Harris — for whom much scrutiny now lands arising from legitimate concerns over Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline. If it gets to the point in the coming days and weeks that Democrats collectively determine that Biden doesn’t have the faculties to continue leading his campaign, Harris could well become either the president or, at least, the Democratic nominee. Harris’ personal popularity isn’t great, she’s got an odd laugh and she hasn’t — for whatever reason — demonstrated a grasp of a specific policy issue that she can point to as having “controlled” over the Biden-Harris first term.

So, yes, she is not above criticism.

But, Gasparino is making an especially repugnant point: “Harris becomes the nation’s first DEI president by default.” Default of what? She’s the vice-president — appointed by the president and elected by the people. That’s the rules of our democratic republic. Yet, Gasparino is suggesting that because Biden selected a Black woman for this position, the process is corrupt and tainted by “DEI.”

Gasparino should know better to stay in his lane of expertise. The complexities of diversity, equity and inclusion schemes in the corporate space are real. To the extent that there may be certain objective metrics to assess individual talent in hiring and retention, more recent DEI trends may undermine those metrics. Businesses are re-evaluating their focus on DEI — and elected officials are pushing legislation to respond to claims that DEI is inherently counter to a classic race-neutral civil rights approach.

That’s a good debate to have. And Gasparino is jumping all over it, yes, to push a new book decrying corporate wokeness. But DEI compulsions aren’t automatically transferable to the political sphere. Corporate America and political culture occupy separate silos. In fact, a legitimate criticism of DEI is that it forces businesses to adopt political/subjective evaluation metrics rather than objective ones.

Gasparino is using Harris as the column’s hook to push his book. The problem is legitimate DEI criticism can quickly just becomes sloppy old-school “What’s this Black person doing in this position? Their very presence is a problem.”

Gasparino’s column isn’t the first example of this new-old, well, default.

Earlier this year, following the awful shipping freight collision that brought down the Baltimore’s Key Bridge, a certain X-poster attacked Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, an African American, as a “DEI mayor.” To the extent that DEI is shorthand for “affirmative action hire that only got the job because of his race,” it is nuts to use this phrase to describe an elected official. Yes, being Black likely helped Scott get elected (he won with 70% of the vote) — but that’s more because Baltimore is 63% Black. Thus, here “DEI mayor” means nothing more than “Black guy is running a city and I don’t like it.”

On Twitter, libertarian writer Brad Palumbo tried to come to Gasparino’s aid by suggesting that Harris’ resume is absurdly thin and wouldn’t even be considered were she not Black and female. Palumbo said, this is a simple fact and “facts aren’t racist.” But, as I responded to him, “facts aren’t racist, but framing is.”

A vice presidential selection is all about political attributes that are being brought to the ticket. From time immemorial, the running mate is all about “balance.” Historically, the “diversity” under consideration had been geographic. Thus, a northern liberal might select a southern conservative (back when the parties contained wide ideological spectrum). In more modern times, tickets went for other considerations such as age (Bush I-Quayle, Bush II-Cheney, Obama-Biden), outsider/insider (Clinton-Gore, Trump-Pence) or gender (Mondale-Ferraro, McCain-Palin or Biden-Harris). The latter, of course, adds a new element — ethnicity (Harris being Black and Asian). But, the overall point is no different than any of those other selections: The presidential nominee is making a statement of his vision and values and sending a message to parts of the electorate that he individually can’t embody.

Now, questions of qualifications bedeviled other tickets (take my word for it, kids, the Quayle jokes were voluminous — and Tina Fey still owes Sarah Palin for at least one wing on whatever home in which she resides). But, as a two-term state attorney general, a one-term US senator and an unsuccessful presidential candidate, Kamala Harris’ resume is hardly significantly different than Quayle’s, Palin’s or Pence’s. If you want to make the case that Harris is inherently as unqualified as those picks, fine. But to smear it with intimations of “inherently unqualified by dint of her race”? Please.

What’s especially depressing about this conversation is that it’s one the right engaged in embarrassingly during the Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination. Conservatives and were appalled that Biden had promised to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court. As certain — ahem! — wise observers noted at the time, it was supremely ironic that Republicans were making this argument given that Ronald Reagan had — fulfilling a campaign promise to diversify the bench — appointed the first woman Justice (Sandra Day O’Connor).

Or that George H. W. Bush just happened to appoint Clarence Thomas to succeed the first Black Justice Thurgood Marshall. And, no, despite how he is rightly regarded among conservatives today as a lion of the court’s right bloc, Thomas was not seen at the time as the most judicially qualified person Bush could have picked. Indeed, Thomas’s most prominent pre-SCOTUS federal position (save for a less-than-two-year appointment to the DC Court of Appeals) was running the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a post he used to condemn the problem with affirmative action. In other words, in the construct of Charles Gasparino, Thomas’ selection to the Supreme Court would have been, in today’s parlance, a “DEI hire.” Funny how that worked out, eh? (Look for further justification hilarity if Donald Trump selects any running mate that isn’t a white male.)

There’s a presidential race to run. One way or another, Kamala Harris is going to play a prominent role. Criticize her views, her decisions, her laugh if you want. But, at least give her credit for legitimately attaining her current position — in not too different circumstances than her male predecessors. And that route has a multitude of more letters than just D.E.I.