Once again, identity politics has made its arrival to the Supreme Court. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has announced that he will be retiring from his position, and this now gives President Biden the opportunity to appoint someone to the court. President Biden stated, “While I’ve been studying candidates’ backgrounds and writings, I’ve made no decision except one: the person I nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity – and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It’s long overdue, in my view.”
What’s striking about this to me is how selective he’s being in who he’s going to appoint. Last time I checked, you can’t discriminate by gender or race yet, here’s the president doing exactly that. Judging someone by the color of their skin and not the content of their character (which is the opposite of what MLK would have wanted). It’s unfortunate to all the men and non-black women who are more than qualified for the job but won’t even be considered due to things outside of their control.
While it’s unfortunate that he’s so blatant in this play on identity politics, I am hopeful that it is waking more people up to see how backward this is. I hope that those who won’t even be considered start to speak up about the discrimination. If you want to hire a black woman, that’s completely fine, but I wouldn’t advertise that you’re only going to select a black woman.
