Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson flexes her “brilliance” in oral arguments. She also “had to be 10 times better than most” to succeed. So claims lame-duck Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), anyway. This is even though the man who nominated Jackson to the High Court, then-President Joe Biden, made clear he chose her based on sex and skin color.
None of this might warrant mention, do note, except for the fact that it relates to deeper issues. That is, the poisonous phenomenon that is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the matter of what constitutes true qualifications.
Reporting on the Crockett crock, The Western Journal’s Michael Schwarz writes:
Wednesday on the social media platform X, Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a black woman who regularly obsesses over skin color, tried defending Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson by insisting that Jackson, a black woman appointed to SCOTUS on account of her sex and skin color, “had to be 10 times better than most” on account of her sex and skin color.
Needless to say, reasonable people cannot reconcile those two claims. A factor that aided a person’s advancement, in this case simply being a black woman, cannot also be the factor that forced said black woman to work harder and achieve more than others. It makes no sense.
As to what Crockett wrote, below is her tweet, posted April 1 (no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke):
And here’s her tweet’s continuation:
[She continues to flex her brilliance in oral arguments & many] dissents.
Please note that by the time a black woman ascends to a powerful position, she Definitely Earned It… if you have any questions… let’s talk about Senator, now Secretary [of Homeland Security Markwayne] Mullin… or please pull the resumes of some of the other justices before entering this chat… actually just don’t, it’s not a debate, these are FACTS (alternative facts = LIES).
Of course, with Jackson’s legal “reasoning,” there will be many dissents. After all, she’s to the “left” of even the other liberal justices.
What Is Our Fashionable Discrimination?
Schwarz then points out that in 2022, Biden announced he’d nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court. No other groups’ members were even considered.
The problem here should be obvious. Black women constitute only about seven percent of our nation. Moreover, just 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of black American women hold a law degree. (And in practice, we choose SCOTUS candidates from among lawyers.) This means they’re roughly just 0.008 percent to 0.012 percent of the entire U.S. population. More significantly, they amount to only about two percent of all lawyers.
How likely is it that you’ll find the most qualified candidate drawing from such a tiny talent pool?
It’s sort of like saying that you can choose a player for your NBA team — but he’s gotta be a Jewish white guy.
Nonetheless, Schwarz notes, Crockett insists that Jackson just had to be a legal-realm Michael Jordan to make the roster. Of course, the congresswoman may claim Jackson faced discrimination earlier in her career. But, Schwarz writes:
anyone who has lived in the world for the last 50 years knows how laughable that sounds. Mountains of statistical and anecdotal evidence show that educational institutions skew admissions figures in favor of “underrepresented minorities,” or URMs.
For instance, according to the test-preparation company PowerScore, law schools routinely boost URMs during the admissions process.
… Incredibly, law schools ranked in the top 14 gave URMs a 498 percent admissions boost. In related news, Jackson attended Harvard.
What says it all, however, is a 2021 survey. Finding: More than a third of college-applying white students falsely claimed they were a racial minority on their college applications.
Now, why would they do this — unless prevalent anti-white discrimination were a reality?
Universally Played Game
Unfortunately, while the Democrats wrote the identity-politics hiring book, Republicans play the game, too. It has become a requirement for political success.
Back in 1980 already, during the presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan explicitly pledged to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. The result was Sandra Day O’Connor, a “pragmatic” (meaning, largely unprincipled) justice.
In more recent times, President Donald Trump nominated Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi for, respectively, Homeland Security secretary and attorney general. (Both have lost those positions during the last month.) And would you want to bet the farm that identity politics didn’t play a role in their elevation?
What Do the Best Look Like?
This identity-politics hiring priority was most comically articulated in the ’90s by then-president Bill Clinton. He wanted, he said, a Cabinet that “looks like America.” But will that ever look like the best?
Consider the NBA, which boasts the world’s premier basketball players. It’s ~75 percent black and 100 percent male. The NFL is ~60 percent minority and 100 percent male. The NHL is ~90-95 percent white and 100 percent male. And while Jews are just 0.2 percent of world population, they’ve constituted ~24–27 percent of Nobel laureate physicists. Those winning this award are also ~97-98 percent male.
Would these arenas be improved by adding diversity and making them “look like America”?
By the way, there may be a merit-determined arena, somewhere, that perfectly reflects general demographics. But I’m not aware of one. This is because neither equality nor proportionality has been the world’s norm in any time or place.
To end on a lighter note, I’ll address Crockett’s tacit mockery of the new Homeland Security secretary, Markwayne Mullin. No, he has no higher academic degree. He had to leave college to take over his family’s plumbing business when his father’s health deteriorated. Yet stepping up to such a plate and fulfilling responsibility builds character and is to be respected, not derided.
Moreover, you can have more degrees than a thermometer but not a stitch of common sense. This reality was portrayed comedically in the 1986 film Back to School. In the following excerpt, the main character, an older, wealthy businessman who’d decided to join his son at college, locks horns with a snooty economics professor.
This is just comedic fiction, of course, but it does make a point. Really, too, Crockett’s pseudo-intellectual snobbery is a betrayal of the American spirit. As with the ancient Athenians, our Founding Fathers wanted us to have citizen legislators, not professional politicians.
Besides, as Crockett and Jackson both prove, possessing higher academic degrees is no guarantee of intelligence, knowledge or, most importantly, wisdom.
