SCOTUS And Affirmative ActionBiden made it U.S. policy to select jurists for its highest court on the basis of race.
By Peter Van Buren
March 21, 2022
Setting Ukraine aside for a moment: Joe Biden has abandoned the pursuit of a race-neutral society.
In choosing Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose confirmation hearings begin today, as his Supreme Court pick, Biden made it the policy of the United States to select jurists for its highest court on the basis of race. He stated that most clearly in his announcement that it was not character or skill, but race and gender that would be his starting points as he chose a replacement for Justice Stephen Breyer. It was a stunning denunciation of ideals Americans have been told to strive for since the Civil War.
There are plenty of people alive today who remember placards noting segregated toilets and white-only waiting rooms. Imagine those people realizing the signs are back, albeit turned on their heads: In 2022, white jurists, to say nothing of Chinese American or Hispanic jurists, must atone for the sin of slavery. To insist this Supreme Court nominee be of a certain race is to admit we are not all created equal, once and forever.
Here’s why discrimination disserves the United States. Of the 1,395 sitting federal judges, just 56 are black women. Only 13 have served at the appellate-court level, one step below the Supreme Court. Assume some of those women are too moderate for Biden, and you are left with a tiny handful of people who even meet Joe’s minimum qualifications. Why would anyone want to so dramatically limit the pool of candidates for such an important job? Is diversity really more important than finding the best jurist to decide critical questions for all Americans? Aren’t we trying to get past the point where a person’s having a certain skin color was the metric of their success?
One judge who reportedly counted among Biden’s top three candidates was Leondra Kruger, who would have been the first person in more than 40 years to move from a state-level court to the Supreme Court. The question of whether someone with her credentials would have even reached the final stages were she not a black woman has an obvious answer.
The thing is, Joe Biden is no crusader. He is a pandering politician. It was exactly two years to the day before he announced Ketanji Brown Jackson as his Supreme Court pick that Biden, on the debate stage in South Carolina days before a primary he could not afford to lose, first made his pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. Biden cynically announced his pick in the midst of the Ukrainian invasion to fit it into the final hours of Black History Month.
As a panderer, the 2022-version of Joe Biden lies about being arrested during the civil-rights movement, while the 1960s-version would not have been caught within miles of a demonstration. Biden of course follows others down this cynical path, like Hillary Clinton, who helped pass a crime bill that led to the incarceration of scores of black youths and turned around to do an Amos ‘n Andy accent in Selma as she sought the black vote.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/scotus-and-affirmative-action/
