A handful of Republicans have referred to Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, as a "DEI hire." They were essentially saying that President Joe Biden picked Harris to be his running mate in 2020 because she was a person of color. Democrats have, of course, pushed back, calling the phrase "extremely offensive and dehumanizing," in the words of former U.N. Ambassador and Obama and Biden White House insider Susan Rice. Some Republicans, like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, pushed back, too, calling the accusation "totally stupid and dumb."
The issue goes back to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. In March of that year, when he had all but wrapped up the nomination, Biden explicitly promised to choose a woman as his running mate. "I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, pick a woman to be vice president," Biden said in a debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Biden's promise came in the same answer in which he promised to appoint "the first black woman" to the Supreme Court if he had the opportunity to nominate a justice. So, in that moment, Biden made a specific promise of race and gender for the court while promising only to pick a woman for vice president.
Later, during a July 20 appearance on MSNBC, Biden was asked, "Are you committed to naming a black woman as your vice presidential running mate?" Biden declined to say but said that among those under consideration at that moment, "there are four black women." He then offered a few hints. Black women have long supported his career, he said, "and so they're the ones, as that old saying goes, that brought me to the dance. I have been loyal. They have been loyal to me. ... My administration, I promise you, will look like America, from vice president to Supreme Court, to cabinet positions, to every major position in the White House. It's going to look like America. It's critically important that that be the case. I can guarantee you that."
It's fair to say that Biden strongly suggested the pick would be a black woman. And three weeks later, Biden picked Harris. According to an Associated Press report, Biden was initially quite interested in Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. But after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the national nervous breakdown that followed, Whitmer withdrew from consideration and recommended that Biden choose a black woman.
"Forces in the country, and within the Democratic Party, were indeed pushing Biden toward a history-making pick," the AP reported. "As protests over the death of Floyd and other black Americans filled the streets across the country, an array of Democrats urged Biden to put a black woman on the ticket -- a nod to this moment in the nation's history, to the critical role black voters played in Biden's ascent to the Democratic nomination, and to their vital importance in his general election campaign against President Donald Trump."
So Harris got the nod. In the end, Biden kept his woman-only promise for the vice presidency, and also made good on the strong hints he had given out that it would be a woman of color. And then he and Harris won the election. (In time, Biden also kept his promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.)
Now, the issue is less how Harris got the job of vice presidential nominee -- it's not hard to understand the dynamics inside the Democratic Party -- but what she would do on the DEI front were she to step up to the presidency. The short version is that she would be the president for DEI.
Immediately upon taking office, Biden issued proclamations and executive orders concerning equity, the "E" in DEI. It began on inauguration day, Jan. 20, 2021, with his "Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government." The order said, "Our nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda." On June 25, 2021, Biden issued another executive order, "Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce," building on the earlier order.
When the 81-year-old president talked about "equity," it seemed clear he meant something along the lines of the old idea of "equality of opportunity," as opposed to "equality of outcome." The former is universally accepted; the latter is the opposite of the American way of life.
Kamala Harris is different. When she talks about "equity," she means "equality of outcome." In February 2021, when Harris had been vice president a little more than a month, she took part in a virtual celebration of Black History Month. She took the occasion to say this:
"We have always fought for equality. But now we are also talking much more rightly about equity, understanding that we must be clear-eyed about the fact that, yes, we want everyone to get an equal amount -- that sounds right -- but not everyone starts out from the same place. Some people start out on first base; some people start out on third base. And if the goal is truly about equality, it has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place. And since we didn't start in the same place, some folks might need more equitable distribution."
It is hard to imagine a major-party nominee for president of the United States saying that. But that is what Vice President Harris said. That is what she believes. Should she become president, she would, of course, have much more power to pursue her goal of equity across the country -- a president for DEI.