Ketanji Brown Jackson is an eminent Judge is President Biden’s pick to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer. And so, the backlash from the right has emerged, some subtle and not. If confirmed, Jackson would become the first Black woman to be a part of the land’s highest court.
Some history is appropriate here. President Kennedy in 1961 attempted to address racial discrimination among federal contractors failed. This failed because it did not manage to shake the widespread assumption in American culture that white men did not benefit from their gender or the color of their skin, and thus earned their lot in life based solely on merit!
The system in place was designed to support the upward mobility of white Americans while actively limiting the opportunities of people of color.
And also, affirmative action was characterized as some sort of handout, despite the fact that whiteness was more of a head start to success than an impediment.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, is now “curious” about the LSAT scores of Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Carlson has also maligned Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to be elected vice president, back in 2020.
These comments hint at a very specific picture of who belongs where and how did you get in here?”
As the New York Times’ Charles Blow has pointed out, James Francis Byrnes and a white man dropped out of school at 14 and never went to college or law school, and yet President Roosevelt put him on the Supreme Court.
Likewise, President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court who had never been a judge, an attorney general or even a defense lawyer.
Senator McConnell, who ushered Barrett’s conspicuously hurried confirmation process, said: “The Senate must conduct a rigorous, exhaustive review of Judge Jackson’s nomination as befits a lifetime appointment to our highest Court.”
The American people didn’t deserve any of that with Barrett!
This is really about a view that considers people of color inherently less fit for the job, whatever the job is, than their white counterparts. With that mindset, efforts to diversify an environment are often met with cynicism, as if quality must be sacrificed in order to diversify.
In reality, quality is being sacrificed when an organization is not tapping into all talent pools. That has been the issue in government, in corporate America, even in the hiring of NFL coaches.
Now this does not suggest that white candidates for a job didn’t work hard, aren’t qualified or haven’t suffered hardships along the way. But white skin has not been an impediment to their American success.
Of the 115 Supreme Court justices, all but seven have been white men. You ever wonder what their LSAT scores were, or did you just assume they were qualified for the job?
We should engaging about the ideology of a Supreme Court nominee, not how Black nominees “got into the room. It’s no mystery: She’s well-qualified.
Remember systems have propped up white men since Colonial days. How did all those white guys get the job?
Source: Op ed LA Times: LZGranderson