[1] Kamala Harris's Candidacy is Flushing Out Racists and Sexists; OTOH: [2] the "DEI Candidate" Biz

   I'm just talking about comments on boards, not actual posts. And I'm not going to link to 'em.
   But they're there.

   I'm so used to the loud, proud declarations  of antiwhite racism on the left...and the nonstop barrage of false accusations of racism, sexism, and the rest of the Standard Litany of -isms and -phobias...that I almost forget that there really is actual racism etc. out there. I mean, you get tenure at Harvard for making pseudo-scholarly false accusations of racism...that shit is right out there in the open. They're proud of it. It's a principle. There's no avoiding it... Ditto sexism against men...and, increasingly, sexism against women by men dressed as women...

   But racism and sexism on the right are generally shouted or laughed down--or at least openly frowned upon and ridiculed until they slink away.

...usually...

   They just simply won't fly places like r/conservative comments. 

   But at e.g. Instapundit comments, that shit came out hard when Harris got the nod. Honestly, I was shocked. Normally commenters there are much more relaxed about race and sex. They'll say true things about them that could never be said on left-leaning boards. They're more relaxed with jokes and biting comments--but it generally doesn't go beyond that. But, anyway--that's changed. 

   And I don't particularly like points like this, but:  why? There are a hundred things you can criticize her for. Why go there?

OTOH, contra the lefties: calling Harris a "DEI candidate" isn't racist or sexist. She is a DEI candidate. Biden announced ahead of time that he'd choose a VP on the basis of sex and race. That's just about the definition of a DEI candidate...

   That doesn't mean she isn't qualified--it means that she was chosen (at least largely) for reasons other than merit.

   More to the point: it isn't (necessarily) racist to say that Harris is a DEI candidate. She is a DEI candidate. 

   And, of course, the point the left has frantically tried to erase from human thought: it depends on why you call her one. If you call Harris a DEI candidate because she is a DEI candidate, that's not racist. If you call her one because you dislike non-Caucasians, then, yeah. That's racist.

   See how that works?

   The most recent alleged research I've seen on this said that DEI hires aren't generally unqualified; but they do tend to be less qualified. Which...is an entirely predictable consequence of using hiring/admissions criteria other than pure merit.

   Anyway, I've noticed the above inconsistency among leftists at my own institution; their position is:

[a] DEI must be wielded with a heavy hand; it must be a major part of any hiring decision.

[b] No one has ever actually been hired because of DEI.

At any rate: being a DEI hire doesn't mean you're unqualified--and it doesn't even guarantee that you're less qualified. But it isn't the greatest sign. 

   Now, I do think that Harris is poorly-qualified and largely unaccomplished. She is, IMO, a terrible choice. If not for her preferred demographics, she wouldn't be in the running at all. She is certainly, undoubtedly, beyond any shadow of a doubt, not the best candidate the Dems could run.

   But most of those things could be said of Donald Trump.

   He's maybe something like the 10,000th most qualified candidate the Pubs could put forward. (Well...I'm actually not sure that's true... I think it's complicated. But I don't think 10,000th is a crazy guess.)

   Anyway.

   The Dems are way, way committed to DEI. They really have no grounds to squawk about it when people basically point out that that's what's going on in some particular case.

   Their position about this is also inconsistent. They not only demand that people be hired for DEI reasons rather than merit, they have adopted principles that say (a) there is no such thing as merit, (b) merit is a racist concept, and (c) no one is ever really hired on the basis of merit...but also, somehow: (d) you are not permitted to say that anyone is hired because of DEI, because (e) that means/entails/suggests that they were not hired on the basis of merit....

   Leftoids at my university officially had an already-passed faculty resolution retconned to remove a reference to (basically) DEI hires. They opted for saying something about how this made members of Preferred Demographics feel icky because somebody else might think they weren't hired on the basis of merit...

   Rhetorically, that's a smart move. But, of course, it's bullshit.