Wednesday, March 23, 2022

At Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing, Republicans Have Spent Three Long Days Playing Racist, Sexist, Dishonest, And Moronic Performative Games

For the third consecutive day, Republicans condescended to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, interrupted her countless times, and asking racist questions, repeatedly going over their allotted time to speak. They also used the hearings to rehabilitate a rapist. And because Democrats are chronically spineless, they did very little to stop the day-long circus. The seditious lawmakers were given free reign to craft their racist and sexist (and jaw-droppingly stupid) questions as auditions for airing on the Fox Propaganda Network. They also spoke directly to the QAnon Cult.

 

Chris Hayes, MSNBC, March 22-23, 2022:

The hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman ever nominated to the Supreme Court in over 200 years of this country's history, has been stomach-churning. We knew going in that her race and gender would be an issue for some Republicans. But I have to say I have been taken aback by the facially racist nature of much of the questioning Judge Jackson faced. And I say "racist" because there is no other way to accurately describe it. . . .

Yesterday Jackson repeatedly faced a line of questioning that assumed she was soft on crime or sympathetic to criminals or maybe even likes crime. And the only reason I can determine is that it plays on the assumption that a black person is inherently associated with criminality in some way, which is, of course, racist -- one of the oldest, most pernicious and dangerous racist tropes in America.

She was also asked multiple times to disown or disavow the views of other black public intellectuals -- just other people who also happen to be black, who have ideas about the country. . . .

[During a discussion with two panelists] Let me also say, as the one white person here, the whole thing is frankly racist. It's obviously the case. The subtext here is you're a black woman. Ergo, you must prove that you are not soft on crime and you also must disown and distance yourself from other black people who say other things, because they are black, and if you're too associated with that, then your blackness is going to get in the way of your neutrality, which is fixed as this objective white feature. . . . You are suspect in your neutrality as a judge because you are not white.

(here and here)

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