The College Fix

Calling Harris a ‘DEI hire’ is racist, historian says

Republican opposition to Vice President Kamala Harris is similar to the Ku Klux Klan, a professor recently said.

“The hoods and white sheets are going to come off,” Murray State University Professor Brian Clardy told Forward Kentucky for an article published on Sunday.

Professor Emeritus Berry Craig interviewed Clardy (pictured) for the publication, which describes itself as the “progressive voice for Kentucky politics.”

Republicans will use “every single racist and sexist stereotype imaginable” to attack Harris, Clardy also said.

Clardy referenced recent remarks by Republican Congressman Tim Burchett, who called Harris a “DEI vice president” and “DEI hire.”

“This is just the beginning. This is not dog whistling. It’s a howitzer shot, and you’re going to hear more of this,” he said, in reference to the Tennessee representative’s comments.

“The Republican Party has become more extreme as the years have gone by,” Clardy said. “The way they react to women and people of color is abysmal, and you’re going to see them in this post-Jan. 6 era show their very worst faces. The hoods and white sheets are going to come off.”

Clardy’s concerns about the GOP were shared by Washington Post columnist Theodore Johnson. “The far right declares that the nation’s changing demographics threaten American culture and that diversity comes at the expense of White people,” Johnson wrote. “Needing a scapegoat for these contentions, its champions have settled on DEI.”

This is not the first time Clardy has criticized the GOP. In 2021, he said Republicans were advancing authoritarianism and white supremacy, as previously reported by The College Fix. He also gave comments back then to Berry Craig, the author of the Forward Kentucky piece.

“Clardy said Trump largely won on a white backlash triggered by Barack Obama’s election,” according to Craig’s paraphrase at the time in the Courier Journal.

Other professors have also recently suggested criticism of Harris, the Democratic Party’s frontrunner for the presidential nomination, is rooted in racism and sexism.

“Women of color are often the most targeted by sexist and racist stereotypes and attacks,” Northeastern University Professor Martha Johnson said, as previously reported by The Fix.

“As a woman and as a woman of color, how aggressive can she be before people start having the reaction that she’s too aggressive,” Debbie Walsh, the director of Rutgers’ women and politics center, told USA TODAY.

MORE: Identity of Kamala Harris matters more this election, professor says

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