“We’re all racist, if we ask hard questions,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham. Not to the Washington Post (3/24/22), you’re not.
The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court occasions a look back at some of the media coverage of her hearings. While media reported GOP senators’ grandstanding harassment and aggressive repetition of baseless accusations, their need to always be signaling “balance” led to some mealy-mouthed avoidance tactics, like C-SPAN‘s tweet (3/23/22) describing a “heated exchange between Supreme Court Nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sen. @LindseyGrahamSC on child pornography sentencing”—when anyone watching would tell you only one side was heated.
Or a piece from the Washington Post (3/24/22) that began:
As Ketanji Brown Jackson this week sat through several days of hearings in her bid to join the Supreme Court, Democrats proudly took turns reflecting on the historic example she sets and the need for the judiciary—much like other institutions—to better reflect the diverse public it serves.
At the same time, some Republicans repeatedly suggested that the first Black female high court nominee was soft on crime and questioned whether critical race theory—an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic—influenced her thinking as a judge.
You might think this says: Democrats noted correctly that there are no Black women on the court, while some Republicans showed part of the reason why—by inappropriately linking Black people to crime and to their own weaponized rendering of an intellectual framework.
For the Post, though:
The disparate treatment underscored the extent to which race hovered over the four grueling days of Jackson’s confirmation hearings this week, serving as both a source of ebullience for the judge’s supporters and an avenue for contentious questions that sometimes carried racial undertones.
So it wasn’t a series of racist attacks on a Black woman in an attempt to deny her advancement. It was “race” itself, “hovering”—both over those who want to see an end to decades of discriminatory exclusion, and those who don’t.
When Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked, “Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system?” and Sen. Ted Cruz demanded to know if she thought babies were racist—those would be some of those “contentious questions” with “racial undertones,” leading one to wonder what a racial overtone would look like.
The word “racist” does appear in the piece—in senators’ own descriptions of the 1619 Project and critical race theory, and in reporters Seung Min Kim and Marianna Sotomayor’s own statement that “Republican senators who would go on to question Jackson most aggressively acknowledged they could be perceived as racist in doing so.”
This sort of coverage may not come off as mean-spirited, but its purposive timidity and awkward “even-handedness” ultimately provide cover for ideas and tactics that should be ruthlessly exposed for what they are. If there ever was a time to talk about “race” “hovering over” things, it’s long past.
I think FAIR commentary is much needed in news reporting. It’s more challening to find news stories that don’t contort their reporting so much for the sake of being fair that it insults our intelligence. I watched those hearings and this is the most honest assessment that I have read.
This is not an adequate analysis. Supporters of Ms Jackson used identity politics just as much as the racists from the Right have done; they merely disguised it as progressive. Would she make a good judge? Look at her record, not the colour of her skin nor her gender. Racialising the politics of the Supreme Court for any reason will not bring about a better society.
As for “inappropriately linking Black people to crime”, the Left must grasp this nettle in order to kill it. The statistics and research are clear that poor and Black men are considerably more likely to commit the kinds of offences that in the USA are likely to lead to arrest, conviction and incarceration than are other categories of citizen. The Left needs to ask why – for in many other societies the statistics are very different – and then present a programme to drastically reduce this inequity, such as socialism, eliminating poverty and making a better society for all.
If poverty creates crime, please show me the surge in crime during the great depression.
Your assertion is contradicted by the rise of organized crime during Prohibition.
Rise in organized crime came about during prohibition. Show me that poor people in the depression committed more crimes. You cannot. The data doesn’t exist
Your blatant ignorance is only outmatched by your overt prejudice.
Whilst poverty does not directly cause crime, and I did not claim that, there are statistical correlations between group income levels and crime. I am challenging your own simplistic link between skin colour and offending behaviour which you mention elsewhere. Systemic and historical racism in the USA means that poverty is correlated with being Black, and there are significantly higher levels of property and violent offending in poorer communities, which are disproportionately Black.
The Left has avoided this topic by either ignoring it or by claiming that it is statistically insignificant. The Right blames the poor for their poverty and proclaims that the only solutions lie in aggressive policing and massive incarceration, neither of which have any evidence to show their effectiveness in reducing offending behaviour overall. Those policies are cheaper for the USA’s ruling class than wealth & income redistribution, reducing poverty and inequality and providing a robust welfare state which, as evidence from both within the USA and around the world shows, have great effects on offending levels.
My challenge is to the Left (which has largely abandoned its traditional programmes to tackle poverty), not to you, as I don’t think you have any interest in having your preconceptions amended by evidence.
Please do not feed the trolls.
Airlane1979,
The cause and effect of incarceration is debatable, in a system of law enforcement which disproportionately subjects those of limited wealth to longer prison sentences.
The cause of incarceration is a political system which uses it in place of more just and more effective measures (including drastically reducing poverty and inequality) to prevent and respond to offending behaviour. I want to see the Left making better arguments with political programmes that tackle crime and the criminal justice system openly in a progressive way and without pandering to the Right and the corporate media.
I’m a British socialist; in the 2019 General Election (the one which Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn lost), my local incumbent Labour MP campaigned on a platform that included supporting the Tories’ plan to employ an additional 20,000 police. She lost to a Conservative. Why elect a quasi-Tory when you can have the real thing?
Until there is a third major political party in the U.S., there will be no change.
The fact that your opinions and comments are entertained, clearly prove otherwise.
Dollars to donuts Tim has everything he needs in life, he has zero reasons in real life to be unhappy.
I can’t be 100% sure of this of course….but Tim probably has a home to call his own, he’s most likely got a refrigerator full of food.
– all of Tim’s bills are caught up (none of the ole paycheck-to-paycheck gig economy indentured servitude for Tim.)
– Bet you Tim’s got money in the bank for a rainy day, or enough money to retire today (if he isn’t already retired.)
– I bet Tim has medical coverage or a pensioners medical plan.
– I bet Tim has at least three vehicles he personally owns, (most likely trucks) either on his property or parked in his garage.
Last but not least, I bet Tim has enough guns and ammo to fully equip a company sized group of soldiers and yet, even though Tim has all of this, even though Tim materially owns more than 80% of the people in the world, somehow, crazily so, poor Tim is still totally unhappy and unsatisfied.
This Is America baby.
FACT: 80% of the world’s population lives on less than $10 per day.
Of course Professor Grower’s income is a nice fat six figure salary for 1/2 a years work and conveniently doesn’t mention that point. Me ? I am off to my 9-5 job (with a Masters btw) at Starbucks for yes; just peanuts.
Emma,
I’ve never fallen into the college loan debt-trap, and have received no degree… other than the “third” courtesy of aggressive members of U.S. “law enforcement.” Just because I retain a reasonably well-developed ability to write, does not make me an indentured servant of colonial policies, but then again, that simple fact might escape you.
Thanks so much anyway, for seeking to elevate my lowly status vis-a-vis a blatantly false narrative, designed to capitalize on recent U.S. union activity, intended to blemish the online reputation of a retired American who currently makes less than $7K per year. BRAVO!
Please keep fostering your vitriolic resentment for those of us capable of pointing out the hollow nature of such arguments: it only serves to proves the motivation of such lies originate somewhere other than within the “common good.”
Maybe Russian trolls are not as stupid as we generally assume… but somehow, I SINCERELY doubt it.
No. They removed my comments twice
So… maybe the third time will turn out to be a “charm?”
REALLY wishing so, with all of my being!
If you got your information from the corporate media with their chanting “first black woman on the supreme court,” you would think that Jackson’s only qualifications for becoming a justice are her gender and skin color, which are no qualifications at all. If you followed some of the senate interrogation and saw her resume, however, you would see that she is qualified by judicial temperament, intelligence, and knowledge of the law. It was the mainstream media that kept the black cloud of racism hovering over the proceedings.