The Idea that Ketanji Brown Jackson is a “Token”
A TikTok comment:
This is among the worst takes imaginable for a hundred different reasons, but I’ll cover two here.
First, Joe Biden identified an all-timer of a market inefficiency:
The Supreme Court has never, in the two-hundred and thirty-two years of its existence, had a Black woman as Justice.
For perspective: There have been 108 white male Supreme Court Justices- that works out to 95%. There have been, counting Justice Jackson, 5 women ever, and 4 non-white Justices. There are more Catholic Justices on the current court than there have been non-white Justices over the entire history of the Court.
Put simply, the value of her lived experiences and perspective bring clear value in addition to her having perhaps the most complete legal resume of a sitting Justice.
Second, let’s look at why this person has an issue with Biden declaring his intention to pick a specific demographic as a nominee.
I would like to start by addressing the most common refrain from a racist when talking about a minority filling a position of importance:
“I just think we should pick the most qualified person!”
We almost never pick the most qualified person for anything. If we picked the most qualified person for every position, mediocre white men would have valid complaints as they became universally unemployable. Brett Kavanaugh wouldn’t be able to score a role as a guest judge on The People’s Court. Hell, we describe our spouses as our ‘soulmates’, but in a world with 7,000,000,000 people, it’s statistically unlikely there isn’t a better match out there.
Imagine job searches in general if hiring managers held out for the very most qualified person for every role…
The real criteria, when we’re being honest with ourselves, is a reasonably qualified person who meets our ideological and superficial demands.
Joe Biden set out to nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court, and reasonable people should have no issue with that, because we, as reasonable people, should be able to acknowledge that there are hundreds- if not thousands- of Black women who are more than qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice.
The only way you could have a problem with Candidate Biden declaring his support for nominating a Black woman for the Supreme Court is if you fundamentally believe that there are no qualified Black women available for the position, or if you believe that Black women have been over-represented historically as Supreme Court Justices. The first option makes you a racist, and the second makes you an idiot. Actually, both of them make you an idiot.
In conclusion, I’d like to wrap up this very first post with a quote from the departed Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.
So…. When is the right time to complain about Biden ‘limiting’ himself to nominating a Black woman for the Supreme Court? How about in the year 2315 when the last 104 consecutive Justices to be confirmed were all Black women?