During the 2008 presidential election season, many people expressed interest in supporting Barack Obama because they wanted to “make history” by voting in the first black man to occupy the Oval Office. This sentiment set off a wave of enthusiasm that propelled Obama into the White House.

But, let’s face it: Voting for someone based on their skin color was (and is) flat-out racist.

Consider how well Obama would have fared in the primaries that election season if he had been white. Hillary Clinton would have been running against six white guys instead of five. Then Obama would have had to defend his dismal record as a senator — a candidate who later told entrepreneurs and businesspeople they couldn’t have accomplished anything without the help of the government. Obama was certainly a you-didn’t-build-that senator, accomplishing little or nothing in his few years in that role.

In many ways, Obama became this country’s very first DEI hire. (Some have pointed out that DEI stands for “Didn’t Earn It,” and that certainly seems to apply here.) The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us 60 years ago that we should judge a person based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. But, here we are doing the opposite.

Equity

DEI is very much racism on steroids. It has led to a fundamentally transformed America where we now applaud each letter of those initials.

Consider the “E.”

Kamala Harris stated in her very first interview after being handed the Democratic presidential (once it was unceremoniously yanked away from the doddering Joe Biden) that she loves DEI. She seemed particularly enamored with the E, which she said stands for “equality.” However, the E does not stand for equality; it stands for “equity,” something akin to the opposite.

Consider: If two students in the same class took a math test and one got an A and the other got a D, both students would have been given an equal chance to complete the test and show off their knowledge. But, if equity is applied, either both students would be given an A for their efforts, or a D — or perhaps a B or a C, if you apply the median. Applying equity would put them both on the same level despite their differing performances.

It is as if the “participation trophies” rampant in kids’ sports a couple decades back have morphed into equity outcomes for our whole society.

Diversity and Inclusion

And what about the D and the I, “diversity” and “inclusion”?

Say you’re on a gurney being wheeled into the operating room for open-heart surgery. You are mildly sedated when you look up and see a nurse walking alongside you. She has a reassuring smile on her face.

“Is my surgeon good?” you ask.

And the nurse looks down and says, “Oh, don’t worry. She’s our DEI hire. And she specializes in both diversity and inclusion!”

Unfortunately, when affirmative action was created in the late 1960s, people pondered the same concern: Was the person they were dealing with in a highly skilled profession (i.e., doctor, lawyer, electronics specialist) in that position because they earned it based on merit? Or were they handed the job over a more qualified person in order to make a business or organization more “colorful”?

This kind of acceptable racism leads to more division between races, not less.

Race in the Race

In the recent presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the race issue was shoehorned in among the questions.

Trump’s response to questioning whether Harris was Indian or black showed where he stood when it came to race. He brushed off her efforts to change like a chameleon over the years by saying that he personally didn’t care what she was; he would accept whatever she decided to settle on.

Of course, Harris’s rebuttal attempted to paint Trump as a divider, pitting the races against each other. But in one incident after another, the Left has shown they will decide what is right and wrong based on black and white, in the most racial sense of the words. This is clearly a racist way of looking at the world.

The Left has cornered the market on this subject. In my book, Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, I point out that conservatives always soften actions from the Left regarding race using euphemisms. For example, they will say that Al Sharpton is a race hustler. From the book…

[But] being a “race hustler” implies that you outsmarted your mark and caused him to fall for your scheme. The focus is deflected from you to the person hustled and outwitted. The same with being a “race baiter” — your adversary is lured into your trap and, again, duped. And someone who “plays the race card” just beat you at your own game. The hustler, baiter, and card-player end up looking good, while the one played looks bad.

These phrases have been invented by the Left to allow conservatives and middle-of-the-roaders to label people on the left. Have these phrases ever been used to describe anyone on the Right? No. People on the right are always called “racist”; whether they are or not is inconsequential.

The acceptable racism mistake voters made in 2008 must not be repeated in 2024. Kamala Harris has accomplished nothing. She’s an empty pants suit. So what else do the Democrats have, then? You guessed it: Race.

Be assured, the Democrats will push voting for a black woman for president and making history once again as a major factor in the days leading into November 5.

They can’t help themselves. They’re the party of acceptable racism.

Another version of this article appeared previously at The Blaze.

Albin Sadar is the author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, as well as the children’s book collection Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries.