Meet The State Department Official Bringing DEI To Foreign Policy

The Biden-Harris administration has made no secret of its effort to push diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the United States. But it is also working to push the leftwing racial ideology around the world.

In 2022, the administration named Desiree Cormier Smith the State Department’s first Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice. She is officially charged with advancing “the human rights of members of marginalized racial, ethnic, and Indigenous communities,” and building “global partnerships to combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia.”

In her own words, that amounts to fighting “structural racism, discrimination, and xenophobia,” which she says “are global scourges that require global solutions.”

Smith’s role is perhaps the biggest example of the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to pushing DEI. It is also a likely target for elimination should former President Donald Trump win re-election in November. Trump has indicated that he will fire leftwing bureaucrats who may otherwise obstruct his policy agenda.

Smith — who says her role exists “because the Biden-Harris administration acknowledges the global nature of systemic racism” — acknowledged as much during an appearance on a Harvard University podcast.

“If we get a Republican president or any other president in the future … then the whole-of-government approach might be a very different one and might not include this position any longer,” the interviewer said.

“That is a possibility,” Smith responded.

The Biden-Harris administration has pushed the DEI agenda throughout the national security establishment. The National Security Agency created a DEI glossary including terms like “white fragility,” “settler colonialism,” and “transmisogyny,” openly referencing the work of Critical Race Theorists, The Daily Wire revealed in an exclusive investigation. 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence also advanced the far-left DEI agenda, celebrating one intelligence agent who said that cross-dressing made him a better intelligence official and telling agents to avoid using “problematic phrases” when discussing Islamic terrorism.

The military has embraced the same ideologies, with the Air Force hosting the CEO of an organization that encourages child sex changes as a speaker at an LGBT pride event, and the Department of Defense requesting nearly $270 million over two years for its DEI agenda.

A State Department spokesman told The Daily Wire that Smith’s appointment “underscores the Department’s clear commitment to combating systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia globally.”

“The State Department’s first-ever Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice was established to advance the human rights of members of marginalized racial, ethnic, and Indigenous communities,” the spokesman said, sidestepping The Daily Wire’s inquiry as to whether or not the State Department believes that the United States is a systemically racist country. 

“Structural racism, discrimination, and xenophobia are global scourges that require global solutions,” Smith said in an interview with the Center For Strategic & International Studies. She also claimed that white supremacy is a “global threat” that requires solutions across “continents and national borders.”

“So when we look at racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism, white supremacy is at the top of that,” Smith stated. “And so those who engage in violent White supremacy, again, they know no borders.”

FBI data indicate that white people are underrepresented among hate crime offenders in the United States relative to their share of the population over the last five years.

Smith began her diplomatic career in the Pickering Fellowship, a State Department program that seeks “members of minority groups historically underrepresented in the State Department, women, and those with a demonstrated financial need for graduate school.” She previously worked for leftwing billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, as a senior policy advisor for Africa, Europe, and Eurasia.

Smith says that DEI is a “national security imperative,” and that white supremacy is a “global threat” that requires solutions across “continents and national borders.”

Just like the State Department’s LGBTQI Special Envoy, previously spotlighted by The Daily Wire, Smith travels across the world as she engages in government-sanctioned activism. Smith detailed one story in which she received a gift from a Brazilian woman who “gave me a shirt with a phrase in Portuguese.”

“Now, I don’t speak Portuguese yet, so when I got to my office I looked it up,” the State Department official went on to explain. “And the text on the shirt translated to ‘Justice is a Black woman, and she does not walk alone.’ And I thought it was so profound and so meaningful, as a Black woman.”