The bigot who called me a 'diversity hire' has found a new hero: Ron DeSantis

Isadora Rangel

I had been a columnist at a paper in Central Florida for a few months when I got a two-page email from a reader angry at a column I wrote about race.

There were comments written that I cannot reprint, but one stood out. The reader, a man, accused my former employer of hiring me to fill some imaginary diversity quota. I was a young woman who had just been hired for a leadership job once occupied by a veteran male journalist. I’m an immigrant from Brazil who, despite being in this country for almost 17 years, still speaks with an accent. In Miami, that’s every other person, but in Brevard County it’s still unusual. God knows what the reader would’ve said if I were a person of color on top of being a foreign woman.

That was almost six years ago. Few people knew who then-U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis was or what the acronym DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — meant.

Today, DeSantis has found the power of turning those three letters into a boogeyman. He has made eliminating DEI initiatives in public universities and colleges his mission in 2023. Closing a diversity office is among the marching orders at New College, the liberal arts school in Sarasota that’s just gone through a hostile takeover by DeSantis’ appointees.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bigot-called-diversity-hire-found-215126850.html