Woman of Color

This is a guest post by JP Miller

In late January we witnessed a brazen low point in the history of the United States. President Joseph Biden announced the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer from the Supreme Court. He would be examining candidates with the best minds, the highest moral character and best records of jurisprudence and make his selection by the end of February.  Consistent with his campaign pledge, Joseph Biden announced that a woman of color would be his nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.

We justifiably condemn the person as racist (or sexist) who thinks and acts on the idea that race determines an individual’s intelligence, that race causes one’s moral virtue or vice or that race is a necessary condition for excellence in jurisprudence.

Joseph Biden, President of the United States, has done something contemptibly worse.  He has elevated race (and sex) above not just any virtue or qualification important to the selection of a Supreme Court justice, but above all virtues and qualifications. A candidate with higher qualifications and greater virtue will be rejected because of her race or his sex. No more devastating blow can be given to those who have long struggled to overthrow the humiliation, cuts, bruises and death blows of the brutes who place the unchosen race or gender of their victims above their long practiced skills and attributes.

The United States, regarding race and gender, has now sunk into the depths of depravity with this announcement. We cannot fall much farther from the lofty pronouncement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal”. Most people in Jefferson’s day knew that slaves and even black slaves were men, they just looked the other way regarding their rights. I’m sure our founders’ wives made their own stature clear, if not in office or the voting booth, at least at the kitchen table or in bed. The founders built a structure for the United States amenable to rectifying their wrongs. With time and struggle their wrongs and shame were rectified.

Joe Biden’s announcement moves us firmly, as a matter of United States policy, to endorse the notion that race or gender can be the primary or even the sole basis for judging a human being. Every individual should shudder in fear at a government that regards race or gender as of primary importance, including those who in effect deny their own merit by prioritizing race or gender.

A policy set at the presidential level will propagate to all levels and all sorts of decisions. Justice Stephen Breyer spoke immediately afterward praising the notion of a woman of color. If even one retiring member of the Supreme Court holds that view, and we replace him with a woman selected by that process the last legal defense may be gone. Reason regarding race is doomed.