Former White House adviser Susan Rice said it was “incredibly offensive” for Vice President Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to say she would win the nomination because she was hired on a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) basis.
“That’s extremely repulsive and inhumane,” Rice told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. on tuesday.
Her response came after Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) called Harris a “DEI hire” and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said Democrats had no choice but to support Harris after President Biden resigned on Sunday “because of her ethnic background.”
Some Republicans have warned their GOP colleagues to back away from discussions about DEI.
Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, would be India’s first female president and the first woman of color to hold the presidency.
Rice, who served in the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations, said criticizing Harris because of her gender and race is an issue that affects many Americans.
She said women, people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, veterans and religious minorities face such attacks, and the message from the Republican Party is that if these people “are successful and rise to leadership positions, you don’t deserve it. You didn’t get there on merit, you got there because you had an unfair advantage.”
“This is an incredible insult to the vast majority of Americans who fit into all of these categories,” she said.
Rice argued that while the words themselves are problematic, they are “emblematic of what this election really means.”
“This is a race to see whether we move forward into our future as a democratic nation where every American has the opportunity to vote, express their opinion and succeed, or whether we go back to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and their America Project 2025,” she said.
Rice argued that the vision of America was one in which only white Christian men mattered.
“DEI is saying that if you’re not white Christian, you didn’t get where you are because you deserved it,” Rice said. “That’s not the America we have.”
