Controversy over new SCOTUS justice nomination divides minority communities

After Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, announced his coming retirement earlier this year, President Joe Biden said he would fill the empty seat with a Black female judge. In February, Biden tapped Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as his nominee. 

After Biden’s announcement, Ilya Shapiro, former Vice President of the Cato Institute and lecturer at Georgetown University, tweeted right after Biden announced his plans to fill the spot in the high court with a Black woman: “Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan (an Indian-American jurist and attorney serving as the Chief Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals) … but alas doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy, so we get a lesser Black woman.”

By tweeting, Shapiro not only tore Jackson down, calling her underqualified with an extremely racist and sexist tone but also inserted another person of color into the conversation, feeding into this detrimental idea of pitting minorities against each other. 

According to the Women Donors Network, a group that researches and does research and provides funding to encourage increased diversity in politics, 90% of elected officials (from local to national level) are white, and most are male. 

This tendency to pit minorities against one another is an old and often successful tactic, but it’s as wrong today as it was a generation ago.

When diversity isn’t an explicit goal, policies and ideas take to come from white men, instead of taking into account new voices when making monumental decisions such as pre-K education for all, abortion laws and gun violence. It’s no surprise that many of these white men are also Republicans.

It’s ironic that people tend to be enraged when it comes to topics that shouldn’t be controversial in the first place, especially minority women, or minorities in general. But when other groups, such as white male politicians say or do something actually controversial, take for instance President Donald Trump’s unyielding series of fiendish racist and homophobic remarks; they often escape the intense criticism directed at minorities and women.

In an article written by Bloomberg Law, Gabriel Chin, a law professor at UC Davis, said that comparing minority groups and making it a “competition”  no one.

“Critics of race-conscious policies try to pit people of color against each other, intentionally or unintentionally … breaking down historical patterns of discrimination benefits all groups. I do not think that if a Black woman ‘wins,’ the potential Asian or other candidates lose,” Chin said.

 

Affirmative Action in the high court

While the term affirmative action is commonly used in the context of college admissions, the phrase aptly describes Jackson’s nomination — and it should engender no shame for Jackson, Biden or anyone else.

As defined by Cornell Law, affirmative action is “a set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination and prevent such discrimination in the future.” In modern America, it typically takes the form of equitable aid on the basis of, at the very least, race, creed, color and national origin.

The two other candidates who competed with Jackson for nomination included Michelle Childs, who earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of South Florida and J.D from the University of South Carolina School of Law; and Leondra Kruger, who comes from a family of doctors, graduated from Harvard and attended law school at Yale. The now-nominated Jackson graduated from Harvard for both her bachelor’s and Ph.D. in law. All three also hold positions as judges in numerous district courts.

All are extremely qualified in terms of education and work background, and so in a sense, any one of them would be absolutely fit to serve regardless of if they were Black women or not. 

Their candidacy, however, is affirmative action because of its root in racial and gender-based discrimination which reparations cannot solely solve. This is all to the good; affirmative action plays a positive role as it rarely disadvantages other groups of people, and gives an opportunity to a marginalized group for some sort of representation. 

Additionally, considering just three of the 115 justices have been people of color — former Justice Thurgood Marshall and sitting Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor — the high court could surely use more representation from marginalized and underrepresented groups.

However, the essence of diversity — which American claims to be built on and value — revolves around much more than just race. It would have been even better if Biden and other leaders considered socio-economic background and education when choosing between contenders for a wider array of perspectives.

Although Jackson’s nomination is a monumental step forward for the Supreme Court in terms of a new voice being brought to the table, Childs may have been a better candidate to fill ex-Justice Breyer’s spot in that she differs slightly in her upbringing and socioeconomic status. 

Her father died when she was a child, and her mother worked at a telephone company. In addition, she is a first-generation college graduate, attending the University of South Florida and University of South Carolina School of Law with the aid of scholarships. 

Although Kruger and Jackson could bring new perspectives on the basis of their race and gender despite their upbringings, Childs could contribute more through her difference in socioeconomic background and schooling on top of her race. Especially when the Supreme Court plans to hear the lawsuit against affirmative action policies at Harvard later this year, it’d be interesting to hear the opinion of a justice who didn’t graduate from an Ivy League university and wasn’t raised by a doctor or lawyer, but is still a person of color.

Despite this, I’m looking forward to learning more about Jackson and what she plans to bring to the high court if the Senate approves her. Seeing her recent decisions on certain issues such as workers’ rights and how she advocates for a liberal stance on social and economic issues despite the intense backlash she has been receiving from many conservatives, I am confident that she would make a principled and empathetic justice who will serve to protect the people and the law America’s democratic institutions oath to protect.

It’s time for a change in office, in regards to both white male politicians pitting minorities against each other and further diversifying the demographics of the current officeholders and Supreme Court. Though there is little remedy for many of the common people as these issues stem from systemic, extremely deep-rooted, race problems, there can be some action taken in better representation in the court — one of them, being effective affirmative action just as President Biden did. 

Although important, Supreme Court nominations shouldn’t solely take qualifications for the job into account, but rather should embody the principles America states it’s built on — including diverse ethnic groups, culture, individuality, etc. Therefore, affirmative action is an effective and necessary step to ensure the court consists of justices with different perspectives, best representing the American people.