Thoughts on the Supreme Court Nomination Hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson

This is the text of the opening of my radio show that aired 3-19- 2022

When President Biden said he would appoint a Black woman to the United States’ Supreme Court, many on the right cried that this was just another example of left-wing bigotry. They pointed out that there are a lot of highly qualified white men who should also be considered. They said it was a disgrace that he ever made a campaign promise to appoint a Black Woman, and a bigger disgrace that he would carry it out.

They did not mention that Donald Trump promised to appoint Justices only from a list prepared by the Federalist Society. A list included no Black Women. Somehow that was not a problem. 

The right is unable to see racial justice as something embedded in history, something that requires a reconning with our past. Ours has never been a nation with only one race, even though only one had political power. There was a time when divisions within the white race seemed insurmountable. Immigrants from Ireland, Poland, and Italy, Jews who looked like them- they were considered unfit by some Americans who came to these shores just a few generations earlier. But we made progress and now celebrate the diversity these groups brought to our country. 

Black America was not allowed to fully participate in our elections before 1968. Since then, America has produced a thriving Black middle class, Black professionals in every field, and a Black President of the United States. The progress is real, and our future depends on it. 

And yet… A factional Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act that made that participation in 1868 possible. Mr. Jim Crow has come out of hiding and in state after state, Republicans are taking away voting rights from people of color. 

They are so afraid of our diverse future that they see demons where none exist- like Critical Race Theory in elementary schools. They are blind and scared. If they were not so dangerous, they would simply be pathetic. 

But they are dangerous. More dangerous that many of us have been willing to admit. Because their fear-- the thing they have been taught to fear-- is that we are becoming the world’s first and only multi-racial stable democracy where power is actually shared by all our citizens.  Their terror makes them antagonistic to our shared future. 

Look, we live in an era of exponential growth and change. Yet they think we live in a zero sum world where nothing changes.  In their view, justice for one means injustice for another. Lifting one person up means pushing down another. It is a cruel world view- but they are cruel. How else can we understand the way they are using state power to hurt people.

Expect horrific behavior from right wing Senators during the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings.