Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson checks off the cultural identity boxes and there’s nothing wrong with that
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President Joe Biden’s pick for the next associate US Supreme Court Justice to succeed retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, is a selection whose mere name and presence are symbolic and elicit cultural affinity and familiarity.
Caveat: I am not going to go into the very unfair and racially motivated opposition lobbed by some against her nomination, calling her an Affirmative Action pick.
Start with the fact that Republican Presidents Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan each announced when it was their term to select a pick that they would deliberately NOT select a man in order to appoint a Woman to the highest bench in the land, and there is absolutley nothing wrong with wanting to see gender and racial diversity represented in the highest echelon of the judiciary, other branches and levels of government and in private sectors.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have long since been adopted in America as lofty goals.
The only people debating with that have other internal demons they really should deal with before speaking out in public asking for qualifications of a woman 100X qualified for the job.
And then, there is this notion of “Identity Politics”, which deals with the alliances formed around people of shared background, cultural, racial, familial, religous and otherwise as it is often used to convince voting blocs and communities to rally around a candidate or topic.
For some odd reason, in recent years, the concept has been used by one side of the political spectrum, the Right, as a means to malign or discredit people of color and particularly Black people’s choice in voting when they gravitate towards a cause, or root for the success of someone from their same racial or ethnic group.
This game is played despite the fact that being a fan of country music, having grown up in Appalachia, being an Irish Catholic, collecting guns or being a hunter, descending from Southern tradition and more are all cultural identities and the communities of…
