Trust me, Ketanji Brown Jackson is far more qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than Amy Coney Barrett. And Blacks everywhere should be proud and encouraged in equal measure that she is even more suited for this pioneering role, as the first Black woman, than Thurgood Marshall was, as the first Black man, when he was confirmed in 1967.
Any fair reading of Brown’s academic and professional credentials makes clear that she is twice as impressive. More to the political point, though, Republicans will not find anything in her background as disqualifying as Democrats found in Barrett’s.
Specifically, here is what I wrote in this respect in “Handmaiden Amy Coney Barrett Is Unfit to Sit on Supreme Court,” October 13, 2020:
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According to reliable reports, Amy Coney Barrett is a member of People of Praise. It is a fringe Catholic group that requires its female members to live by a code of conduct so strict, it makes the code Margaret Atwood’s handmaidens are forced to live by seem promiscuous.
Among other chauvinistic strictures, members of Barrett’s group believe that
- wearing large belt buckles is sinful because they draw too much attention to the crotch;
- wearing perfume and cologne is sinful because they serve as aphrodisiacs;
- wearing anything but plain white cotton panties is sinful for similar reasons;
- dating, let alone sex, before marriage is sinful because any kind of intimacy outside marriage corrupts the spirit; and
- obeying one’s husband is virtuous because he is the head of all matters related to family life.
Of course, anyone who has read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (or seen the eponymously titled streaming series) will recognize those as the strictures of a dystopian society. Which is why it is self-evident that any woman who was reared on and now lives by them will have a very warped sense not just of personal freedom but of right and wrong.
Alas, Barrett is such a woman. But nothing disqualifies her from being appointed to the Supreme Court quite like the way she conspired with her group to deceive the Senate and, by extension, the American people.
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Even so, for Republicans, Jackson is too Black, whereas Barrett was just white.
Former President Reagan won universal praise when he declared his intent to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. President Biden merely followed that precedent when he declared his intent to appoint a Black woman.
Therefore, you’d be forgiven your consternation at the public show Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz have been making of decrying Biden’s decision as “offensive and insulting”. That is, unless you understand the perverse, Trumpian form of reverse psychology motivating them.
It presumes that the more overtly racist you are, the less likely people are to think you are a racist. Because the normal mind would think nobody is that stupid to be so overtly racist. But the effect would be to normalize your racism. This is rather like Trump realizing early on that the more he publicly humiliates men like Cruz, the more loyal they become to him.
But I urge you to tune in to Jackson’s confirmation hearing. Because you’ll see her deflecting their partisan efforts to trip her up like an unflappable teacher schooling an unruly teenager.
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