Editor’s note: Dean Obeidallah, a former lawyer, is the host of the daily show “The Dean Obeidallah Show” on SiriusXM Radio. Follow him on Threads. The opinions expressed in this op-ed are his own. Read more opinions on CNN.
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“America may soon be dominated by the country’s first DEI president, Kamala Harris,” screamed the headline of a New York Post op-ed written on Saturday by Fox Business senior reporter Charles Gasparino.
Gasparino, a longtime media professional, began his piece by accusing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs of “literally destroying companies.” He then took aim at the vice president, writing, “With Kamala Harris rising to the top of the Democratic field, Americans may soon be exposed to the full impact of the next President of the United States’ DEI agenda.”
Gasparino’s suggestion that Harris got where she is because of diversity programs, not through hard work, is despicable. It echoes the white supremacist myth that people of color are inherently inferior to white people and therefore that they achieve success and influence through diversity programs, not through merit. (I was once called a “quota hire” on social media by a regular Fox News guest a few years ago, because at the time I was the first Muslim hired to host a national radio show.)
This is by no means the first time Gasparino has used the term “DEI hires” to explicitly disparage the achievements of people of color. In fact, last week, Republican Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado followed this same vile tactic in a social media post attacking White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Boebert, who in the past has suggested that Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is Muslim, is a terrorist, was clearly upset by Jean-Pierre’s comments that Biden has been in the job for much longer than she believes, slandering her as an “untrustworthy DEI hire.”
Earlier this year, the same DEI slur was used to attack Baltimore’s Black mayor, Brandon Scott, after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Scott responded to the slur by saying, “I know what people really mean when they say ‘DEI mayor,'” before bluntly adding, “They really mean the N-word.” The mayor later told MSNBC that the acronym “DEI” actually stands for “Duly Elected Incumbent,” brilliantly mocking bigots.
Republicans were even seen using DEI as an insult against their own party members in February after Democrat Tom Suozzi defeated Ethiopian-born Republican candidate Maji Melesa Pirip in a special election for New York Congress, prompting Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump ally, to declare on Newsmax that “DEI has turned out to be a bad recruiting strategy for Republican candidates.”
The intent of these types of attacks can’t be hidden. In fact, Gasparino didn’t shy away from the point, writing that Harris was chosen as Biden’s running mate in 2020 because, as a Black woman, she “checked all the boxes.”
Never mind that Harris had been a public servant for more than 16 years at the time, first as district attorney of San Francisco and then as attorney general of California, where she oversaw the nation’s largest state justice department, where she successfully won billions of dollars in damages from unscrupulous corporations that were preying on Californians.
It also doesn’t matter to her critics that Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, where she made her mark on the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. No, Gasparino seems to think that Harris’ many accomplishments are due to preferential treatment based on race and gender. He predicted that if President Joe Biden stays in the 2024 presidential election and wins, he will be physically unable to serve a four-year term. As a result, “Harris will be the first DEI president in the United States by default,” he said.
Of course, none of Gasparino’s comments were made in a vacuum. They are consistent with Republican efforts to discredit both the accomplishments of people of color and our country’s addressing of past racism and racist practices. This has been evident for months, as the Republican-led Congress has rushed through legislation to limit and even ban DEI programs in education, state government, contracting, pension investments, and other aspects of civic life.
These actions are, at least in part, a reflection of the hostility toward DEI shown by former President Donald Trump, who in fall 2020 signed an executive order banning the federal government, its contractors, subcontractors, and grant recipients from offering diversity training on racial issues.
But many of these efforts came only after protesters filled streets across the country following the video footage of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and many Americans began to realize just how deeply rooted the country’s racism problem is.
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Nevertheless, President Trump, who in the summer of 2020 called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” dismissed such programs as “anti-American propaganda.”
And that was just the beginning. In an interview with Time magazine published in April, the former president vowed to try harder to tone down diversity efforts if he returned to the White House. “I think there is clearly anti-white sentiment in this country, and that can’t be tolerated,” he declared.
When Gasparino, Boebert, Gaetz and others used the term “DEI adoption,” they meant to downplay the victories of Black Americans because they simply didn’t believe Black people could have achieved that level of success on their own.
And it’s quite reminiscent of Trump himself, who promoted the false “birther” claim that former President Barack Obama, a black man, was born in this country and could never have achieved academic and political accomplishments on his own merit. It was a statement born of jealousy and bigotry. It was despicable then and it remains despicable now.
But if we believe him, Trump will pick up where he left off if he returns to the White House. And sadly, the country’s DEI-hating president will have plenty of allies, since hostility to racial equity and equality seems to explain much of what drives the Republican Party today.
