Harris’ campaign will have to contend with DEI attacks from Republicans

After three and a half years as vice president, racist attacks on Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, continue but are now connected to the broader culture war over corporate diversity and minority affirmative action programs. After President Biden announced on Sunday that he was withdrawing his re-election bid, Democrats are rallying around Harris as their nominee, and America’s fraught racial politics will once again take center stage.

This week, more than 40,000 people participated in a Zoom meeting hosted by a political collective called Win with black womenwhich raised $1.5 million for Harris within 3 hours, some conservatives used social media to promote Harris as unsuitable candidate who was promoted to that position solely because of her race and gender.

On Monday, Republican Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.) denounced on X the potential promotion of “our DEI vice president,” a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have come under attack by conservatives on the grounds that they result in minorities getting jobs over better-qualified white applicants.

In recent weeks, the New York Post called Harris the first “DEI president.” On Fox Business, Republican Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.) said Democrats must “choose between a mentally incompetent president and a DEI vice president.” And Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said Harris “has proven to America why DEI doesn’t work.”

It is unclear why some conservatives consider Harris unqualified, say some of her supporters.

“As a black woman, I’m just very suspicious,” said Renee Griffin, a corporate communications consultant in Texas. “With no other vice president, there would have been any discussion at all about who should have taken over if Biden couldn’t continue.”

With such attacks, Republicans risk offending black voters, which would lead to higher turnout among a key Democratic voting bloc, said James Lance Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco. The black community knows that “DEI means N-word,” he said.

If Harris becomes the Democratic candidate, she will likely face numerous attacks. Republicans are already linking her to the wave of migration at the southern border. And racist attacks are nothing new in American politics. Former President Barack Obama was subjected to racist attacks during his presidential campaigns – Donald Trump demanded for years that Obama hand over his birth certificate, falsely implying that he was born abroad and was not eligible to run.

But Americans’ views on race have become much more outspoken and caustic in recent years, said Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. “We’re in a period right now where, between the anti-critical race theory stuff and the anti-DEI push, the right is obsessed with race,” he said. Republicans in several states have limited the teaching of black history, criticized the education system as being inundated with “critical race theory” — an academic concept that says racial bias is embedded in America’s institutions — and in at least a dozen states they have passed laws restricting diversity programs.

Following Biden’s announcement that he would not run for a second term, attacks based on Harris’ ethnic identity were the most common form of criticism of her on X, according to data from data firm PeakMetrics.

The attacks included a widely debunked theory that Harris was ineligible to be president because of her parents’ citizenship at the time of her birth, as well as claims amplified by prominent Republicans like Laura Loomer that Harris is “not black.” “She is Indian-American. She is pretending to be black as part of the Democrats’ delusional DEI quota,” Loomer said on X.

Harris’ mother was born in India and her father in Jamaica. Harris was born in Oakland, California, making her eligible to run for president.

DEI programs have come under intense attack from conservatives since a Supreme Court ruling last year invalidating minority advancement in college admissions. Dozens of companies are battling lawsuits over their corporate diversity programs, while many Republican-led state legislatures across the country are considering anti-DEI legislation, making such efforts a potential sticking point in this year’s presidential election.

Despite increasing political tensions surrounding DEI programs, a recent Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that about six in 10 Americans believe diversity programs are a “good thing.”

“She and other Black women running for office have always faced racism and sexism,” said Stefanie Brown James, co-founder of the Collective PAC, a political action committee dedicated to recruiting, training, funding and supporting Black candidates. “Unfortunately, in our culture today, it has become almost acceptable to be openly racist and sexist.”

Such attacks should be a concern for Democrats, says Sam Sommers, a social psychologist at Tufts University. But he adds: “Are people with that level of racial resentment really going to vote for any of the other Democratic candidates?”

Some black women say the conservative attacks on Harris remind them of criticism of other prominent black women, including the successful campaign that led to the resignation of Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s first black president, who raised concerns about the university’s handling of anti-Semitism following Israel’s Gaza war.

It’s difficult to separate the racism from the sexism that Harris is likely to face in this election, says Koritha Mitchell, author of “From Slave Cabins to the White House.”

“Americans are not honest about their difficulty recognizing merit unless it comes in the form of a straight, white man,” she said. “We have all been socialized to think in ways that lead us to ignore credentials, qualifications, temperament and good judgment in women, especially women of color.”

The treatment of women like Harris and Gay is part of a larger backlash against the progress made after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police four years ago, said Denise Hamilton, a DEI strategist in business. “Change is hard and power doesn’t give up its position easily, that’s just the reality,” said Hamilton, who recently published “Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future.”

The more blatant racist rhetoric can be good in the long run, Hamilton said. It’s important to know, she said, “who thinks I’m not worthy of existence.”

If Harris is the nominee, Democrats should not avoid the debate about diversity, said Julia Azari, a professor of political science at Marquette University.

“Democrats often respond to these kinds of attacks with, ‘Well, she actually has more experience than white male candidates like Dan Quayle,’ and that’s empirically true,” Azari said. “But empirical truths don’t change narratives, what you have to do is formulate new, better narratives.”