The Democrats love to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as some sort of moral achievement, but here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud: they know perfectly well that calling someone a DEI hire is an insult.
It is a label that implies that you did not earn your position on merit, and the left understands this just as much as the right. That awkward truth came into sharp focus recently when a caller on C-SPAN asked Delano Squires, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, if he thought he was a DEI hire.
The caller asked, “Since he’s a member of The Heritage [Foundation], he’s also, I guess, a promoter of Project 2025. And I would ask him, are you a DEI hire for, uh, Heritage…”
The host cut in to move things along, saying, “All right, Anwar.”
Squires didn’t shy away from addressing the question directly. “In terms of being a, a DEI hire. Um, there’s no part of me that believes that,” he said. “I have the respect of my colleagues. My work stands for itself. As I said, I’ve been writing about these issues and thinking about these issues since I was 15, but even in an official capacity for over a decade,” Squires continued.
He went on to highlight what he saw as a contradiction. “It’s interesting that some of the same people who say that black folks need DEI and celebrate DEI will use DEI as a way to insult black people with whom they disagree. I find that actually odd, uh, quite interesting.”
A liberal caller on C-SPAN today asked Heritage Research Fellow @DelanoSquires if he was a DEI hire. It didn’t end well for him.
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) September 30, 2025
“ It’s interesting that some of the same people who say that black folks need DEI and celebrate DEI will use DEI as a way to insult black people with… pic.twitter.com/jcBMkgtuCR
The caller got more than he bargained for, and the moment laid bare one of the most glaring hypocrisies in today’s politics. The people who insist that DEI is necessary and noble are the same ones who wield it as a weapon against black conservatives they disagree with. If DEI is so great, why does it hurt to be called a beneficiary of it?
The Biden-Harris-Autopen administration went all in on DEI from day one. On Jan. 20, 2021, Biden signed Executive Order 13985, which mandated racial equity initiatives and support for underserved communities across every federal agency. It was a sweeping directive that inserted DEI into everything from airline safety to the military. Agencies were required to submit equity action plans detailing how they would further embed these policies into government operations. The result was a massive expansion of programs that cost taxpayers millions of dollars and placed identity ahead of competence.
Kamala Harris and Ketanji Brown Jackson are both prime examples of DEI hires in action. Biden promised to pick a woman of color and (for some reason) chose Kamala as his running mate. He pledged to nominate a black woman, so he selected Jackson for the Supreme Court. Biden selected both women with their identity as a central qualification, and that reality speaks volumes about what DEI really means in practice.
The exchange between Squires and the C-SPAN caller exposes the fatal flaw of DEI more powerfully than any white paper or academic study ever could. Even those who claim to champion the concept instinctively know that calling someone a “DEI hire” isn’t praise; it’s an insult. If these programs truly worked as advertised, the label would carry pride, not stigma. Instead, it undermines credibility, reduces people to box-checking, and leaves even its supposed beneficiaries defensive about their accomplishments. That contradiction doesn’t just weaken the case for DEI; it proves in plain sight why the entire framework is a lie.
