DEI hire is the new N-word. I think we all know that by now. No need to masquerade like it isn’t, as if black people are idiots who don’t understand what many of you mean when you call them a DEI hire.
The people who say this, they’re not talking about individuals who were extremely unqualified for a job, but got it in order to fill a quota.
They are referring to any individual who happens to be black, Hispanic, foreign, a woman, or a member of the LGBTQIA community. At this point, it’s a slur. It’s the blanket label they use to offend every non-white person who the think didn’t earn their job, title or position.

During this past election cycle, DEI hire received a lot of national attention, not just from people on social media.
Many politicians, commentators, political supporters and YouTubers spent a great deal of time calling Black people a DEI hire or flooding YouTube videos with the comment, “DEI= Didn’t Earn It.”
Bigots aren’t distinguishing between who is truly a DEI hire and who is just a minority.
The term DEI Hire is extremely offensive
During an appearance on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, former White House adviser, Susan Rice called the term “DEI hire “incredibly insulting.”
“That’s extremely offensive and dehumanising. Let me tell you what it means when somebody call a person like me or anybody else a DEI hire,” Rice said.
“What that means is, if you are a woman of any background, if you are a person of colour, if you are an immigrant, if you are LGBTQ, if you are disabled, if you are a religious minority, if you are a veteran, and you achieved success, rose to a position of leadership, you didn’t deserve it; you didn’t get there on merit. You got there because you got some unfair advantage. That is incredibly insulting to the vast majority of Americans who fall into all of those categories.”
Rice is absolutely correct.
When you say someone is a DEI hire, what you’re saying is they didn’t earn their seat at the table, that they are not deserving of respect because they were just recruited to make the company look diverse – that they took a spot that deserved to go to a white person.
That phrase devalues the accomplishments of that individual.
What I’ve also noticed is that when some black leaders fail, that failure is used as a way to disqualify any other black person angling for a role.

DEI Hire does not mean unqualified
It’s no secret that black people have lamented having to work harder, be better, more accomplished in order to compete.
There are times when I agree with that sentiment and times when I don’t. The reality is some situations are just more competitive than others and so one has to stand out in a major way in order to be successful.
Then, there are black people who work harder because they want to remove all doubt from the naysayers that they don’t belong at the table.
It’s almost as if that person would have had to attend an ivy league school, run a successful business or ascend to the office of president of the United States in order to shake the stigma of being DEI hire, and even that is not a guarantee.
I understood many companies’ initial intent to have diversity, equity and inclusion policies in their organizations. They wanted their employees to be aware of their own biases and to make a greater effort to include people who might be different from them.
The issue I had was when it became forced or they demonized white employees entirely. I never thought that was fair.
White people have unfair advantages, too
There are many white people who have had great success and didn’t work for it due to nepotism, connections and legacy.
Many students at Harvard, Princeton and Yale didn’t gain admission on their own merit. They didn’t have the grades to be there.
But, what they did have was family with money who could make a contribution to the university that would guarantee admission. Is that doing it the right way?
Former US President George W. Bush was not a scholar at Yale University. In fact, he was famously a C-student, but managed to get in due to the university’s legacy admission policy. It didn’t hurt that he was also the son of a former US president, George Bush.
In 2014, Huffington Post wrote about how Bush benefited from affirmative action, even though he was against it.
I happen to read a lot of my comments on my YouTube videos, and what I started to notice is that anytime I did a video about Kamala Harris, a gay person, a trans person or a Hispanic person, that phrase DEI hire would pop up an uncomfortable amount of times.
Black conservatives who came across my video would also comment that they had noticed an uptick in the usage of that phrase.
That phrase may sound cool to repeat when you’re attacking someone you don’t like or support. But, I can guarantee that if you’re a minority, it’s only a matter of time before someone uses that term to describe you.
Viviek Ramaswamy who ran for president has been very critical of DEI policies, he wants them gone.
“An efficient government has no place for DEI bloat,” said Ramaswamy, who was initially tasked with slashing government waste.
Just a few days ago on X, Ramaswamy, who is an extremely wealthy entrepreneur and also happened to attend an ivy league school, was himself referred to as a DEI hire.

People are comfortable with Black people being discriminated against
A YouTube content creator, known as Truthing with Randi B. also used her platform to weigh in on the DEI hire sentiment.
“One thing that conservatives do very well, is that they brand well. So, they, in their attack against DEI made DEI a black thing. Anytime they would talk about a DEI job, they would attach it to a black person. So, when people started to think about diversity, equity and inclusion they would associate it with blackness,” she said.
“What the truth is, as a professional who has been in this field for 20 years, is that DEI includes just about everybody except for white males. So, it is for people who are neurodivergent. It is for people who have disabilities, people who are veterans that are looking for a job, it is for people who are older who want to get into the workplace, it is for people who may speak English as a second language, but they speak English. It is for people who are in the LGBTQIA community, of course.
Randi B. said DEI was intended to ensure that the workplace is reflective of America and that those in the workplace feel welcome.
“But, people were fine with voting for a president who made it clear – we cannot say that the man lied, that he was going to get rid of DEI, that he was going to wipe it out because they thought it was about black people, and that’s it. And people are comfortable with black people struggling. People are comfortable with black people being discriminated against. And so people are like, ‘we didn’t know you meant us’,” she said.