Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.

President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race obliterated the prevailing political narrative. Instead of old-age Biden versus old-age Trump, we had the emergence of not-old Kamala Harris. The reaction on the Republican side has been both panicked and telling.

About Harris, Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman (the one who beat Liz Cheney) said: “Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel. I think she was a DEI hire.”

Hageman’s comment was echoed by Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett who suggested Biden picked Harris as vice president solely because she is Black. “One hundred percent she is a DEI hire,” Burchett said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion. He went on. “When you go down that route, you take mediocrity and that’s what they have right now.”

Sebastian Gorka, a TV host on far right Newsmax, said Harris was going to be the nominee “because she’s female and her skin color is the correct DEI color.” He also said she “cackles like an insane woman.” Megyn Kelly accused Harris of sleeping her way to the top of California politics.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson has cautioned Republicans about criticizing her ethnicity or her gender, it is a certainty much of the critique of Harris will be around the DEI hire theme. Republicans can’t use the N-word now but the diversity hire theme is the same gist. Unless it is Candace Owens or her equivalent, for conservatives, no Black woman candidate would be considered qualified.

Republicans seem stuck in a time warp. For much of American history, only white men could even be considered for high political office. Women and people of color were not part of the equation. They were, per se, ruled out. Republicans appear to long for the good old days of white and male supremacy. Normal for them is having, except for tokens, Black women on the bottom rung of powerlessness. This is a party that entertains the great replacement theory.

Part of the racist and sexist attack on Harris is that she is mediocre, intellectually inferior, or somehow unqualified. By any objective standard that is a crazy assertion.

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Harris has had a long record of accomplishment. For many years she worked as a prosecutor where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery and sexual assault cases. She got elected twice to serve as District Attorney in San Francisco. She then got elected again two times to serve as Attorney General of California. In 2016 she won her race for the U.S. Senate and in 2020 she was elected vice president.

The accusations of mediocrity and intellectual inferiority are absurd. For someone who is so allegedly incompetent, she had a knack for consistently winning. Prosecuting is not exactly an easy job. You have to convince beyond a reasonable doubt. To be effective and persuasive requires strong writing and oral advocacy skills. Saying she is mediocre is essentially a meaningless ad hominem attack. There is no specificity in the allegation. They are trying to erase her impressive credentials.

Conservatives are using the diversity hire theme to discredit Harris. They think only straight white men are qualified. Last year, DEI got blamed for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, for Boeing’s safety crisis, and for the Baltimore Bridge falling down. It is scapegoating.

There are many shallow critiques of racism and sexism. To appreciate what is most offensive about the critique of Harris as a diversity hire, it is necessary to situate the 2024 presidential election inside the broader context of U.S. history. Discrimination was historically baked into America from the beginning. With roots in slavery, Black women faced occupational segregation as they were concentrated in jobs that paid lower wages and offered limited upward mobility.

In most of American history, the system quarantined Black women in the lowest-paying jobs. Legal restrictions kept all women out of high-paying jobs that were reserved exclusively for men. The changes around that are relatively recent.

While some real progress has been made, America has never seriously grappled with our structural racism and sexism. Racist and sexist comments about a candidate reflect and reinforce prevailing power dynamics. Any woman or person of color who rises to higher office is still often a first. That is true with Kamala Harris who was the first Black woman elected in her state to her various roles over the last couple of decades. Being first is anything but mediocre.

Conservatives can’t say all Black women should be domestic workers, agricultural workers, caretakers or service workers even if they think that because it is too explicitly racist. So they create the attacks on DEI and wokeness. The purpose is the same: to keep people of color and women in their place at the bottom of the hierarchy. They are creating a new rationale to justify the status quo.

Not surprisingly, racist and sexist attacks on Harris have skyrocketed online since she announced her candidacy. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has cataloged a spike in truly ugly racism and misogyny. Much of it is based on the slander that she used sex to advance her career. This has been showing up in far-right sites like Truth Social, Gab, Telegram, 4Chan and Rumble.

In the last week or two, we have seen neo-Nazis parading in Nashville, Tennessee and Howell, Michigan, wearing shirts that say “pro-white” while carrying swastika flags. When it comes to racism and sexism, denialism still rules in America. This is not a reassuring sight. One can only hope for a new national willingness to honestly look at and rectify our racial and sexual dark side.

Kamala Harris and Democrats have to contend with the perception that America would never elect a Black woman president. Maybe that is one ultimate form racism and sexism take now.