I enjoyed reading coverage of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings. For the record, I feel she should be confirmed. She’s well-qualified. Her positions may not satisfy all sides, but in our system, the President gets to nominate the successor when a supreme court justice seat becomes available. I believe those justices should generally be confirmed unless something unexpected and disqualifying arises during the approval process. Having political opinions that differ from the current minority party is not disqualifying.
That being said, liberal reaction to the confirmation process has been both enlightening and disturbing. The general consensus of the liberal media and pundits has been, “how dare those white men treat a successful black woman so badly.” We’ll come back to this. But first, a little backstory.
In 1991 President George H. W. Bush nominated black conservative Clarence Thomas to take the seat formerly occupied by civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall. Prior to this nomination, supreme court confirmations had, for the most part, been uneventful. The Robert Bork episode during the Reagan years and a couple of Nixon nominees who were rejected were really outliers. Each of Reagan’s other nominees were easily confirmed. Scalia and O’Conner were elected unanimously. But things changed a little during the Thomas hearings. Even though CNN had been around for a decade, it was the first supreme court hearings that dominated the 24 hour news cycles, plus the salacious nature of the attacks on Justice Thomas made for riveting television.
Republicans were furious at Democrats for what they considered to be dirty politics. Even so, both of Bill Clinton’s nominees sailed through confirmation. George W Bush’s first nominee, John Roberts, also was confirmed easily with only minor pushback from liberals. There was more pushback on his second nominee, Samuel Alito, but he survived, largely along party lines. Two of Barack Obama’s nominees, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagen, were easily confirmed.
The problem flared back up when Republicans refused to bring Obama’s third nominee, Merrick Garland, to a vote in the waning days of Obama’s final year in office. That re-ignited hyper-partisan hearings on the next three nominees – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, were all treated awfully by Democrats, both in the chamber and in the media. Particularly Kavanaugh, who was subjected to the same old tricks that Clarence Thomas faced.
Now, moving forward to Ketanji Brown Jackson. She was subjected to a pretty solid grilling by Republicans, but from what I saw, the questions weren’t attacks on her character or her personal life, they were legitimate questions about her judicial record. The “define ‘woman'” question by Sen. Blackburn was clearly a political stunt, but questions about her sentencing philosophy related to pedophiles and violent criminals were not “dog whistles” for QAnon. Those questions are as relevant to a hearing for a supreme court justice as were questions to Trump’s three nominees about abortion from Democratic questioners.
To the liberal talking heads that were outraged over her treatment, I simply say, “go watch the hearings for the eleven supreme court vacancies that preceded her (starting with Clarence Thomas). You’ll see that while she was grilled, the other eleven were also grilled. This is not an example of racism, it’s an example of an accomplished black female being treated equitably. As the underrepresented continue to increase their numbers at the highest levels of both public and private institutions, they have to expect to be treated the same way the white guys who proceeded them were treated. You don’t get a pass just because of your identity.