Why some Republicans are branding Kamala Harris a ‘DEI’ candidate

As key figures in the Democratic Party solidified support of Kamala Harris as their nominee for president, Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, blasted her as a “DEI vice president” on social media and then as a “DEI hire” in an interview.

He was not alone. The largely Republican talking point that uses the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion picked up pace this week as delegates and donors rallied behind Harris.

“She’s a DEI pick,” conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk said. 

“This trap they’ve created for themselves of Kamala, the DEI hire, it’s not going to be very popular with the average American,” former Trump official Sebastian Gorka said on Newsmax.

A central plank in the anti-“woke” culture wars, DEI has become GOP shorthand to impugn the qualifications of people of color who ascend to positions of power and influence. 

“Unfortunately, it has become common for some conservatives to attempt to discredit, demoralize and disrespect leaders of color by labeling them ‘diversity hires’ – or otherwise misappropriating the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion as thinly veiled racist insults,” Mita Mallick, author of “Reimagine Inclusion” who runs DEI at Carta, wrote in Fast Company.

When the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed in March, Mayor Brandon Scott – who is Black – was branded a “DEI mayor.” 

“We know what these folks really want to say when they say ‘DEI mayor,’” Scott said at the time.

The DEI rhetoric grows out of a central Republican Party belief that society has become too fixated on matters of race. Weaponizing the term has caught on during this presidential election cycle as conservative activists, influencers and politicians increasingly blame efforts to create a more inclusive and equitable environment for everything from airline safety issues to global tech outages to the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.

Now the chief target is Harris, the nation’s first multiracial and woman vice president who is poised to top the Democratic ticket in a country bitterly divided by cultural issues around race and gender.

“Most Americans support DEI programs. The attacks on Kamala Harris as a ‘DEI candidate’ are just further evidence of how out of touch they are with most Americans,” said Alvin B. Tillery Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Diversity at Northwestern University.

DEI programs have come under heavy fire since a Supreme Court ruling last year gutted affirmative action in college admissions. A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found roughly 6 in 10 Americans said diversity programs are a “good thing.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough slammed Republicans for attacking Harris − the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India − as a “DEI candidate.”

“I will tell you, 99% of Americans don’t even know what those letters stand for. But they know that it’s probably racist,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” Tuesday.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson urged Biden administration critics to take aim at Harris’ record instead.

“Her ethnicity and her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever. This is about who can deliver for the American people and get us out of the mess that we’re in,” Johnson said at a press conference.

Burchett later told HuffPost: “I think we can just focus on her performance as vice president, as the ‘border czar,’ and that is enough.”

Democrats were not convinced the race-based attacks would stop. Those attacks were the most common form of criticism of Harris on the social media platform X, accounting for 19% of all mentions Sunday after President Joe Biden endorsed her candidacy, according to an analysis from data firm PeakMetrics.

“It’s going to be very important that we brace ourselves for some of the unfair, misogynistic, and racial undertones, overtones, explicit attacks and implicit attacks that she may be subject to,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said.

Trump and his proxies have cast Harris as a California radical who is politically unpopular and complicit in the failures of the Biden administration and who owes her political rise to racial preferences, not hard work or talent.

Harris has faced questions about her track record, political challenges and viability as a presidential candidate from across the political spectrum. A former Harris staffer wrote in The Atlantic this month that supporters were too quick to write off these concerns as “racist and sexist.”

But the use of DEI as a smear is uncomfortably familiar to Black women leaders who have to continually prove their competence and fitness and fight off the perception that they were “DEI” hires, said Ruchika Tulshyan, author of “Inclusion on Purpose.”

Branding someone a DEI candidate – particularly a woman of color – isn’t unique to the GOP, said Tulshyan, who reports hearing the references in liberal circles and in workplaces across industries and across the country. Black women in positions of power are frequently dismissed as token or diversity hires and face a level of scrutiny that anyone who identifies as white rarely encounters.

“I’m already seeing calls from the Black women I know to gear up for retraumatization and all sorts of attacks they’ve faced before in their own corporate careers as leaders,” said Tulshyan, founder and CEO of DEI strategy and communications firm Candour LLC.

DEI under attackCompanies get quieter but are not retreating from commitments

Black women are sharply underrepresented in the corridors of power, from the Beltway to corporate America. 

A USA TODAY analysis of hundreds of top companies found white men are almost eight times as likely as Black women to hold positions with the highest pay and the most power and white women 4.5 times more likely. 

Their scarcity is the result of a unique set of challenges of overlapping identities that produce discrimination far worse than racism and sexism alone.

“This is ironic because survey data suggests that women of color, particularly Black women, are actually more motivated to pursue leadership roles, more confident in their capabilities, and more likely to express interest in high-salaried jobs than white women,” Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the intersections of race, gender, and class in the workplace.

For decades, discrimination has stymied the careers of Black women, from the harmful stereotypes – like the racist trope of the “angry Black woman” – to a lack of mentorship and support as they climb the leadership rungs.

As Black women rise in organizations, their existences become ever more solitary. Their performances receive extra scrutiny. They can’t afford to make mistakes and, no matter their achievements, they are repeatedly forced to prove they deserve their positions, Wingfield said. 

“These perceptions don’t necessarily need to be grounded in reality, but when they exist absent firsthand knowledge of Black women’s work, skills, and talents, then it becomes easy to dismiss them as people who don’t belong in leadership roles, especially when there are so few of them there in the first place,” she said.

Attacking Harris as a “DEI candidate” rather than on her political positions or track record is a pernicious form of fear mongering that implies that women and people of color are making gains “because of lowered standards and unfair concessions,” Tulshyan said. 

“This stokes voting based on fear rather than facts,” she said.