Additional Thoughts On “DEI” In Politics
Facts versus framing, with a little Mandela effect thrown in for good measure.
![[a cartoon of a diverse group of people]](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/diversity-cartoon-gender-race-workplace-1000x550-570x314.jpg)
As we saw on Sunday, within hours of President Biden stepping aside, Trump supporters (including those who post on this website) began to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “DEI” candidate. James did a deep dive into the topic on the following day. Earlier this morning, in his Tab’s post, Steven linked to the Politico article: House GOP leaders urge members: Stop making race comments about Harris. Some excerpts from that article:
During a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, chair of the House GOP campaign arm Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and others issued the warning after a series of comments by their members that focused on Harris’ race as well as claims she is a “DEI” pick, according to two people in the room.
In the 48 hours since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Republican leaders have tried to train their criticism of the presumptive Democratic nominee on her handling of the border and her plan to skip Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress.
But several Republicans immediately took the criticism in a different direction. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Monday that Harris was a “DEI vice president” and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) over the weekend questioned if Democrats are sticking by her “because of her ethnic background.” If nominated, Harris would be the first Black and South Asian woman to be a major party nominee.
“This should not be about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have a record to compare,” Speaker Mike Johnson told POLITICO as he left the Tuesday meeting, saying Harris would have to answer for Biden’s record. “This has nothing to do with race. It has to do with the competence of the person running for president, the relative strength of the two candidates and what ideas they have on how to solve America’s problems. And I think in that comparison, we’ll win in a landslide.”
Leaving aside whether or not Speaker Johnson’s policy assessment is correct, its worth noting that his comment that “this has nothing to do with race” gets back to how the DEI framework is often used by conservatives to communicate in a pejorative sense on race (and imply that the individual it’s being used again is somehow “less qualified” for the job.
I realize that some commenters will push back on this and say all the are doing is “stating facts.” I recently came across an essay from a conservative writer that does an excellent job of pointing out the fallacy of that argument. Robert A. George* is an opinion writer for the New York Daily News and punster extraordinaire. Earlier this month, on his “Punstack” account, he wrote the essay Kamala & the ‘DEI’ slur: How the Right Still Gets Race Wrong. The entire piece is worth reading (he also discusses it in a video interview). Here are key highlights:
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. … 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.
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.”
First and foremost, I really appreciate how George smartly separates the application of DEI in business spaces from DEI in political spaces. I think that’s a critical distinction and is an example of how, as many have pointed out, an individual’s identity (really identities) is always already a critical consideration in the political sphere. To that point, George goes on to write:
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.
He then turns to examine how branding someone as “DEI” sidesteps actual considerations of qualifications:
[Q]uestions 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.
George goes on to note how this typically is an attack that we see from the Right. See, for example, the Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination. George rightly points out the irony in these attacks, given many examples in which Republican presidents publicly used identity qualities as key components of their selection criteria:
[I]t was supremely ironic that Republicans were making this [DEI] argument [aginst Brown Jackon] 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.”
George’s essay lays out how this is, for once, a legitimate case of “both sides”: it’s easy to demonstrate that both sides regularly factor various aspects of identity, including gender and race**, into their selection process.
I think George puts the most important point of the essay in the middle (which, unfortunately, might bury it a bit):
On Twitter, libertarian writer Brad Palumbo tried to [defend the use of DEI] 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.”
And that’s the big issue here: framing a politician or political appointee as a DEI candidate*** (a) ignores the context of politics, and (b) often doesn’t actually look at that individual’s record compared to other people who currently hold a similar position. It only serves, to Speaker Johnson’s point, to make the argument about how their race (or gender or sexuality or etc****) makes them inherently deficient. And that’s the definition of racism.
Beyond making a moral and ethical choice not to contribute to the spread of racism, there’s also a practical reason for Republicans to drop the “DEI Slur”–in elections this close, turnout is especially critical. And reminding women and people of color, in particular Black folks, that your party is prepared to use gender and race against a candidate is a great way to encourage more turnout in communities that reliably vote for Democrats (and helped make Donald Trump a former President in 2020).
* – On the topic of identity, George is Black conservative. For those looking to diversify their reading lists, I highly recommend his work. His twitter feed is great–though you need to be prepared for puns… so… many… puns. He also has an OTB connection as he and our late friend Doug used to go back and forth on Twitter back in the day.
** – One note on Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as a running mate. Political Report David Weigle pointed out how a Mandela effect is going on with our collective memory of her selection process.
*** – Shining the spotlight on “my side of the aisle,” liberals and progressives also engage in this behavior too. We just tend to use different language. Saying someone is the “Token [X]” conveys exactly the same meaning as “DEI candidate.” My fellow travelers, if you find the latter distasteful, make sure the former is unacceptable, too. “Calling in,” from and with care, to improve your side is always worthwhile.
**** – A point James raised earlier in the week is that we often reduce diversity to the most obvious and often immutable qualities of an individual. I agree with him that it would be best for all of us to work on greatly expanding our definitions to include a much wider range of experiences and backgrounds. Ironically, this was (to my understanding) the point of “intersectionality.” Sadly, the choice by Conservative provocateurs to make that word politically radioactive ultimately helps lead us back to looking at diversity from a single vector analysis.
A couple of points.
First, I’ve noticed for some time that Republicans keep saying Biden pledged to put a woman of color on the ticket. He did not. He promised to put a woman on the ticket and he didn’t specify the race; in fact his short list included several white women, such as Elizabeth Warren, Gretchen Whitmer, and Amy Klobuchar. It’s true that many Dems were calling for him to pick a black woman, especially after George Floyd’s death. But Biden never at any point committed himself to doing so.
Also, the question of qualifications is weaponized by the right to reinforce a system that is already stacked against minorities. Biden did consider several black woman other than Kamala, including Susan Rice, Karen Bass, and Val Demings. But none of them ever held statewide office, and so they were “unqualified” according to many conventional criteria of what makes a presidential or vp candidate qualified. Most commonly, it means a Senator or a governor. Kamala is literally only the second black woman Senator in history, and there has never been a black woman governor. So if Biden wanted a black woman on his ticket, it virtually required him to look outside of the standard definitions of “qualified.”
Reminds me of how the repubs tried to tag President Obama with “ lack of experience” even after four years of being POTUS.
If you are female, black, or in fact anything other than pasty-white upper-middle-class male, you’re going to get accused of a) being an affirmative-action hire and/or sleeping your way to the top. And no matter what you’ve done successfully, you’ll be accused of being “unqualified.”
@Kylopod:
100% this. I noted it in the “footnotes” section of the post (speaking of burying things). It’s a false memory, much like people who think that Biden promised to only serve one term.
Also, great point about the challenges of being among the first to break through a glass ceiling.
I caught a GQP congress critter yesterday on CNN doing the DEI line. He went on to say something like “Biden said he’d pick a black woman for VP, which guarantees mediocrity.”
Think about it. No black woman in a nation with millions of them is qualified to be vice president? You can expect mediocrity at best?
That’s seems to be the thinking, or bias, on the right. That people of color are not qualified for anything. This is patently false, but it’s what drives them.
Republicans are extremely tiresome.
Trump had NO elective experience prior to his election, was he truly qualified? (No.)
JD Vance has fewer years as a Senator, and less work experience overall.
I could go on but I won’t.
They might as well come out and say that any woman or person of color isn’t qualified in their minds. Paraphrasing Teve, these are horrible people with sh1tty values.
It’s just a continuation of what Atwater said. “You can’t say N-word so you say forced busing and states rights and all that stuff.” Well now they just say “DEI hire.” But it all boils down to saying N-word without explicitly saying N-word, it’s no more complex than that.
@Mikey: Indeed.
Any world in which Dan Quayle was qualified to be Vice President has no authority to criticize DEI hiring. The same is true for any political party that can tap both Quayle and JD Vance for the office.
Jack Germond, from the old McLaughlin Group show nailed it perfectly at the announcement of Quayle as the VP pick when he said Quayle “was so light weight that he could tap dance on a Charlotte Russe.”
@Matt Bernius: The Biden “promise” to serve only one term seems to me more wishful thinking/assumption than remembering a promise. And then, as the sledding became rough, people started talking about how wise Biden was to have not crippled his administration by pledging to run only once, thereby turning his administration into a “lame duck from day one.”
At least, that’s my revisionist history take on it.
@Matt Bernius:
Wait, people say that happened?
That’s a sure way to lose an election. Even if one managed to sneak into the Oval, any major initiatives are dead on the scene.
@Matt Bernius:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
@Kurtz:
I’m sure Biden never promised to serve only one term.
I was almost certain he would, but also he’d come to that decision much earlier. Say after the midterms, or the summer of 2023 at the latest, he’d announce he wouldn’t seek the nomination for 2024, thus making room for younger candidates, and allowing the full primary process to play out.
It’s not that I thought him incapable of serving two terms, but that the risk he couldn’t, given his age, was too high. Not to mention the rigors of the office are hard on younger people (unless they spend their days watching TV and rage posting on data mining apps).
I didn’t think he’d be incapable of carrying out a campaign. I still think he’s up to it and he could win, but the kerfuffle following the debate made it impossible. It’s hard to campaign while you defend your candidacy all the time.
I wish he had declined to run for reelection. But, util someone finds the keys to the DeLorean, there’s nothing to do about that but write some AH story.
Thanks for the book recommendation in the other thread, Matt.
On topic: pledging to only serve a single term is an excellent way to lose andelection. Or in the unlikely event of a win, ensuring one’s agenda is dead at the scene, forget arrival.
I went through the Politico article on the tabs thread. Every part of it is ridiculous.
Rep. Ogles, who appears in the Politico piece, has some separate issues.
Shit, didn’t know I posted twice.
@Kathy:
I know he didn’t. That’s why I’m surprised peo–oh, nevermind.
Also, Bernius:
You’re correct, of course. I did it the other day without using the word “token”.
I knew the hard deck. I knew it. I broke it.
@Kurtz:
We all do it from time to time–usually without thinking about it. That’s part of the human experience.
Being better is doing what you just did–recognizing you did it, acknowledging it, and working to not do it again.
I know many people whose pronouns are not what you would always expect. I repeatedly and unintentionally used the wrong pronouns for them from time to time. At first, others needed to correct me. Now, I catch myself most of the time, but I’m not perfect.
The acknowledgment that I was wrong and my continued good faith working on correcting those mistakes is, thankfully, why I get treated with grace by those people.
Where he goes with that argument is true, fair enough, but I’d push back if the claim is that DEI is detrimental in business. Perhaps the fervent focus on it has been too much at times, but its effect is going to depend on the sector and the skillset needed. Diversity is good for ideas and marketing. The video games my daughter plays constantly were not thought up by some tech bro. Barbie wasn’t made by Scorsese.
And that’s where we see some use in politics. Different ideas? Check. Outreach in marketing? Check. As dicsussed in the previous DEI thread, Vance is indeed a DEI pick in some sense. And that’s not an insult at all, even if Republicans would get defensive about such a claim. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon like Trump was.
In any case, what we’re really looking for in leadership is someone who can understand different viewpoints and make good decisions based on that. I hope people can look past the candidates’ race or gender, but it’s clear that many people are going to have trouble with that.
@Franklin:
In my reading of George, I don’t think he’s arguing it’s bad for business. I think he’s advancing an argument that the way it’s often been implemented can be detrimental.
While I’m a strong supporter of working towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, I have a lot of sympathy for that argument.
Admittedly, this is a really tricky subject to write about. I want to recognize how my being as a cis-gendered, straight, gently neurodiverse, middle-aged, firmly upper-middle-class White guy working in tech can color my view.
The tl;dr version of my feeling on the topics that a mix of “race-neutral” laws and policies, organizational focus on diversity that’s “easy to measure,” and constraints tied to maintaining profit (or minimizing operating costs) tends to take something that is hard to do and really complex and flattens them down into a dogmatic formula that ends up not really helping under-represented communities in the workplace and often harms broader DEI efforts.
Hell, Trump chose Vance. The guy is 39 and has no prior govt experience other than a year as Senator. So he has minimal life experience besides no govt experience. The GOP has done nothing but identity politics for a long time, it’s just that they have decided limiting your choices to white people, especially religiously conservative Christians, doesnt count.
Steve
There’s your problem right there. Running on the Republican record of policy accomplishments? No wonder they immediately turned to something else.
I mean that quite seriously. Trump carried 2016 on years of her emails and Benghazi and shrill. Biden caught them flat footed in 2020, as had Obama in ’08. Since then it’s been four years of old slow Joe prepping for ’24. Without their character assassination they got nothin’. But it takes time to build, it depends on correctly guessing the D nominee.
Am I being ‘racist’ for suggesting that Republicans are keeping, sticking by both Trump and Vance, because of the ethnic backgrounds?
Matt, your blog is another example of why OTB is one of my daily go-to reads. Clear, concise, well thought out and succinct. I could only wish that such clarity could carry the day, but alas, alack, we both know that won’t happen.
As everybody has noticed “DEI” has become the most recent replacement for the N word. Like “urban” and such.
Under the heading of “sauce for the goose”, I wonder what losing to a black woman would do to Trump. He is their champion. The ultimate Great White Hope. Beaten first by Sleepy Joe, then a black woman? What would his father call that?
It’s like white, straight, christian male is the highest standard, so anyone else doesn’t quite match up. Even in fields where minorities are accepted in large numbers, like the NFL, this is still the standard for certain positions. Remember the arguments about black QBs and head coaches?
It’s similar as to how a trans minor cannot possibly know they are trans, because they’re too young to really know. Yet no one questions a cisgender minor might be too young to really know they’re cisgender.
@Kathy: Although he didn’t promise to serve only one term, I was under the impression that he would bow out after one term… until TFG decided to run again, which was announced before the midpoint of Biden’s term. But I don’t have a reference to back up my impression.
Quayle was widely considered a political lightweight. You may remember that he was portrayed as a feather in Doonesbury. While visiting Indianapolis in ’96, I heard a novelty song on the radio, which I believe was the IN state song with lyrics changed to mock how privilege helped Quayle to not go to Vietnam (I spent the waaarrr in Indianaaa…).
@Eusebio:
I recall reading recently Biden explained he decided to run because of the Convicted Felon.
Quayle was portrayed by a child in SNL. Literally a child dressed in a suit and tie with a similar haircut. I don’t recall if he had any lines. But then, Dana Carvey’s impression of Bush the elder pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the studio.
When the Murphy Brown kerfuffle erupted, the first response on the show was a character telling Murphy “It’s Dan Quayle! Who cares what he has to say.” Or words like that, implying Quayle was insignificant. Later they did a more in depth reply about what a family is.
Rita Rudner did a special late in the 80s, in which she took some questions from the audience. One asked whether she’d miss being able to joke about Reagan. She answered “Oh, no. Not now that we have Dan Quayle.”
In the 1992 race, there was endless media speculation about dumping Quayle from the ticket.
That’s just of the top of my head. I wonder why all of that stuck.
“This should not be about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have a record to compare,” Speaker Mike Johnson told POLITICO.
So he has conveyed this message to private citizen, convicted felon and leader of the Republican Party Donald Trump.
Trump Says He Won’t Change After Assassination Attempt: ‘Not Gonna Be Nice!’
He’s also not going to demonstrate a grip on reality either.
“They say, ‘why would he mention Hannibal Lecter? He must be cognitively in trouble.’ No, no, these are real stories. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs—a lovely man, he wants to have you for dinner.”
How do you spell MORON?
@Mikey:
Humpty Dumpty and Lee Atwater have both weighed in on the meaning of words – they mean what the person who uses them intends. When a Republican says DEI or CRT he/she means n_gg_r, no more, no less.
@dazedandconfused: Trump hasn’t won an election since 2016, and even then it was a squeaker, with him badly losing the popular vote.
Let’s keep it that way.