In a vacuum, I wouldn’t consider “diversity hire” to be a slur. However, in colloquial use by racists and bigots, it is definitely used as such much in the same way they have appropriated “DEI” as a slur.

To clarify, I mean the terms themselves used in the proper context. Calling someone a diversity hire, DEI hire, affirmative action hire, etc is 100% appropriating those terms as slurs because it calls into question the target’s qualifications by insinuating they were only hired to tick a box.

why don’t we question the competence or qualifications of non-POC hires? Like why are non-POC hires not “cronyism hire” or “familiarity hire”?

We totally do:

• Familiarity hire: We call those ‘nepo babies’ or something related to nepotism.
• Cronyism Hire: Not sure there’s a single term for it, but I (and probably others I’d imagine) just literally call them “cronies”.