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There were dueling Super Bowl LX performances—well, sorta. Bad Bunny did the official one that an estimated 128 million people watched live, the second most ever, according to The New York Times. It also had garnered almost 73 million views on the NFL’s YouTube channel as of Wednesday night.

And Kid Rock headlined Turning Point USA’s Super Bowl live-stream event aimed at conservatives. Only five million people watched, Fox News Channel reports. Kid Rock called Jay-Z a “DEI hire” in a Fox News interview the day after the Super Bowl. Why reduce one of the greatest rappers of all time to a DEI hire? The same reasons why professors who diversify academic departments are too often mischaracterized as such.

Since 2019, music mogul Sean Carter (also known as Jay-Z) has worked with the NFL to diversify its slate of Super Bowl halftime performers. Was the goal to discriminate against white performers? No. The overwhelming majority of halftime performers over time have been white. The aim instead was to help television’s biggest stage better reflect and appeal to America’s extraordinary racial diversity. In so doing, the NFL and Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s entertainment company, did not sacrifice artist quality or viewership ratings. Four of the five most watched halftime performances of the 21st century have occurred under Jay-Z’s leadership. Last year, Kendrick Lamar surpassed the record that Michael Jackson long held. Bad Bunny’s numbers place him third of all time.

So again, given these stats, why call Jay-Z a DEI hire? The same reason why Congressman Tim Burchett (Republican of Tennessee) slapped the label on Kamala Harris. He declared this in response to her becoming the Democratic Party’s sole presidential candidate after Joe Biden unexpectedly exited the 2024 presidential race. Harris was the second in command, the first woman to serve America as vice president. California voters elected her to the U.S. Senate. She was the state’s first and only our country’s second Black woman senator. Harris had also been elected attorney general of California, our nation’s largest state department of justice. Her irrefutably impressive record as a district attorney and prosecutor confirms that Harris was far from a so-called DEI hire. Why call her that?

Vice President Harris and Jay-Z are not DEI hires. Their records and legacies speak for themselves. Suggesting that they got something only because they are Black is racist. The notion of a DEI hire is a white supremacist dog whistle. At its core is the insistence that white people belong on top, at the epicenter of power, on every Super Bowl stage and in university academic departments that have had too few or no people of color. Whites best reflect America and its values, is the belief. Everyone else is comparatively less qualified, only in a place or position because of race, not merit. There is also a presumption that those people are not actually talented, despite the availability of so much proof that confirms otherwise.

Joe Biden said he would select a Black woman vice presidential running mate—all but one other president before him chose white guys. Biden also vowed to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. There had never been one. Ketanji Brown Jackson was his choice. In both instances, he selected extraordinarily smart, talented, highly respected and astoundingly credentialed citizens. Biden never said that any two Black women would suffice. He did not select a suspect pair whose qualifications were quantifiably inferior to those of their white male peers. Instead, he found in Vice President Harris and Justice Jackson two leaders who gave America something that it had never had, but long deserved.

I have been the first person of color in a tenure-track faculty position in the history of an academic program. When I applied, a demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion was mentioned, but nowhere in the position description did it indicate that only a person of color would be hired. I remain certain that I was selected because of my record and the brilliance of my ideas, not entirely because of my race. But being Black and queer enhanced the program, the academic schools in which I taught and the overall university. Students of color and white students alike (including white heterosexual men) benefited in unique ways from having had me as their professor. Annually, many told me that I was their first ever Black faculty member. Students continue to tell me this year after year.

I have also served on numerous search committees, mostly for tenure-track faculty positions, but also for a provost, athletics director, chief diversity officer, business school dean and a director role within the U.S. Department of Education. Never once have I seen a position description indicating that whites need not apply. That would have been unlawful. I also have not seen a call for applications that explicitly noted that DEI was the only credential or value that an applicant needed. Consequently, I have never been part of a search or heard of one occurring anyplace where being a woman or a candidate of color was the single criterion.

Another assumption about so-called DEI hires is that they cannot do the work and are unfairly set up to fail in their roles because they are not as talented as whites who were passed over. This argument has also been used to dispute the importance of race-conscious admissions practices. As I noted in a Forbes article published just after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action nearly three years ago, Black Harvard and Princeton students graduated at higher rates than their classmates over all, and equally at Yale.

Graduation rates were higher, the same or just one percentage point lower at other elite universities, including Caltech, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Emory and Vanderbilt. Despite their academic success, Black collegians at these institutions are too often presumed to be DEI admits. And when they graduate and earn top jobs, they are baselessly labeled “DEI hires.” Two degrees from Harvard did not exempt Justice Jackson from this.

To be sure, there is no such thing as a DEI hire in U.S. higher education or any other industry. It is a racist notion. Too much proof verifies that Jay-Z, Kamala Harris, Ketanji Brown Jackson and professors of color bring so much more than their racial identities to their professions. Noteworthy, though, is that being a woman, a person of color or the intersectionality of the two adds tremendous value to spaces that have had no or far too little diverse representation.