It's definitely bigoted and snide, because there are far better critiques to be made of Kamala Harris.

She worked hard, establishing her bona fides as a dedicated centrist focused on the important issues, like imprisoning people for truancy and smoking marijuana (even though she had admittedly done so herself), and dang it, we should acknowledge the important work she's done for the private prison industry. (Just like President Biden did helping to get the '94 Crime Bill passed.)

If she succeeds Biden as president sometime in the next four years, it'll be a stark reminder that just because someone fits into protected categories, it doesn't mean they won't govern as a regressive, like Kyrsten Sinema.

Calling elected officials "DEI hires" is generally pretty stupid when they're directly elected . This is the one case where it's sort of true - the demographic of the VP matters since you're generally trying to court voters that the President is weak with. The thing that makes these comments racist is that they only noticed once the VP was non-white. This is literally no different than a presidential candidate from the north-east putting a VP candidate from the south on the ticket to court southern voters, something that has happened dozens of times. The VP has been diversity hire since forever. Mike Pence , an evangelical nutjob, was literally on the ticket to strengthen Trump's appeal with other evangelicals. He is literally a DEI hire.

The people making these comments are just using it to express their racism and nothing more.

Anyone who uses the term "DEI hire" unironically is a bigot, regardless of who they are saying it about.