Biden State Department appoints first racial equity and justice representative

The State Department appointed its first-ever racial equity and justice special representative on Thursday.

Desiree Cormier Smith will be tasked with leading the department’s “efforts to protect and advance the human rights of people belonging to marginalized racial and ethnic communities and combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia around the world” with the hope ofachieving “more effective foreign policies and programs that support all people regardless of their race or ethnicity,” according to a press release.

“The State Department strives to promote and protect the rights of individuals and communities who are oppressed because of their race or ethnicity and create a just world where all people are valued, included, and able to live up to their full potential,” the release read.

Cormier Smith began her career as a foreign service officer and most recently was the senior adviser to the department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

“Inequity, racism, and xenophobia are threats to democracy and run contrary to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” Cormier Smith said in a video shared by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “I’m honored to serve alongside my State Department colleagues, and our partners and allies, to create a more just world where all people are valued and included. A world in which no one is prevented from living up to their full potential simply because of their race or ethnicity.”

Members of the House of Representatives’ Republican Study Committee (RSC) are pressing for answers from the State Department over their plan to appoint a Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice.

RSC chairman Jim Banks of Indiana led the letter, which was signed by 37 of his House Republican colleagues, asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the leaked decision to appoint the official. “America should be a beacon of life and liberty, not abortion and equity,” Banks told Fox News Digital in a Friday statement.

In the letter exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, the lawmakers wrote about their concern regarding the planned appointment for the special representative, pointing to President Joe Biden’s executive order requiring federal agencies to produce an “Equity Action Plan” and citing the order’s language that “includes terms like ‘advancing racial equity,’ ‘ending systemic racism,’ and ‘countering disinformation.’”

“This is the exact same language used by left-wing politicians, academics, media companies and corporations to justify new kinds of discrimination, censorship and other measures to take away American’s rights and divide our country,” the letter states. “Such radical ideology has no place in the United States and exporting it will hurt our image abroad.”