On the forbidding question of race, ethnicity, and sex when it comes to Supreme Court justices and other things in life
In the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court, if given a chance, and he is following through on that pledge. In a statement last week, the president said,
While I’ve been studying candidates’ backgrounds and writings, I’ve made no decisions except one: The person I will 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.
(I have quoted directly from the White House website. They capitalize “black,” I see. This is a fashion that comes and goes.)
Let me type a little bit. I may furnish some food for thought, whatever you conclude.
• In the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan tried a gambit: He pledged to nominate the first female justice. A few months into Reagan’s first term, Potter Stewart announced his retirement from the Court. Advisers reminded Reagan that he had not said, during the campaign, when he would nominate a woman to the Court. He was within his rights to wait for a later vacancy. But Reagan responded like this: I said I would do it, and I may not get another chance. My predecessor, remember, served four years and got no Supreme Court pick.
True. (Reagan’s predecessor was Jimmy Carter.)
• I was 18 when all this went down — Stewart, Sandra Day O’Connor, etc. The political world seemed terribly exciting back then. The buzz was that “Sandy” and Justice Rehnquist had dated, back at Stanford. What we did not know until later — much later, like 40 years — is that Rehnquist had actually proposed marriage to Sandra Day.
• In U.S. history, there have been 115 Supreme Court justices. Two of them have been black. The first, Thurgood Marshall, was nominated by President Johnson in 1967. The second, Clarence Thomas, was nominated by Bush 41 in 1991. Did Bush have to pick a black nominee, to replace the only black justice? No. Was he right to? That’s an interesting question. At the time, I did not think there ought to be a “black seat” on the Court. That smacked to me of a quota, or tokenism. I also thought it was insulting to black justices, or potential black justices.
I don’t really know. It’s hard to imagine a Supreme Court without a black justice on it. Just as it’s hard to imagine a presidential cabinet without a black member. In theory, I want the best person for the job, regardless of color or sex. If the nine justices are all black, so be it. If the cabinet is composed entirely of left-handed Aleuts, so be it.
But that’s just theory. Life is a little different. Appearances matter. Etc.
• In June 2009, I wrote a piece called “States of Mind.” Its subtitle was “Some notes on Sotomayor, race, and nagging questions of identity.” Let me just wade in, please. You can click on the piece itself, for context.
Marshall had come from the “black bourgeoisie” in Baltimore; some of his family were so light, they could pass. Thomas had come from Pin Point, Ga.: no running water or electricity, Gullah instead of English, etc., etc. But was Thomas “black” enough to replace Marshall? A disturbing number of people, black and white — because black liberals had given white liberals permission — said no.
Another paragraph, following on:
I have a strong memory of a mayoral race in Detroit. It pitted Dennis Archer, a black Democrat, against Sharon McPhail, another black Democrat. McPhail was light-skinned, with freckles: and she essentially campaigned as the “blacker” candidate, stressing and damning Archer’s acceptability to whites. In Newark, Mayor Sharpe James mocked his opponent, Cory Booker, as “neo-black”: like Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice, he said.
Racial politics is a minefield. One false move: kaboom.
• Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama in 2009. She had given a speech in which she talked about her “Latina soul,” her “Latina voice,” and her “Latina identity.” Do you remember Susana Martinez, who was governor of New Mexico? One of her opponents, Gary King, an “Anglo,” said, “Susana Martinez does not have a Latino heart.” I asked the governor what she thought King meant by that. She said, “I have no idea.”
I said to her — maybe this was brazen — “I know exactly what he meant.” She said, “What?” I said, “He meant that you have Reaganite views, not left-leaning ones. And that you don’t practice grievance politics. I would bet my bottom dollar on it.”
And I would.
• Linda Chavez, the writer, is another Reaganite. In fact, she worked in the Reagan White House. For her pains, she has had coconuts thrown at her. Coconuts? Yes. Brown on the outside, white on the inside. Get it?
The Left always despised Linda. Now the Right does too, which says something about our politics. (I think our politics is sucktastic.)
• Sotomayor was the first Hispanic Supreme Court nominee. Robert Gibbs, the presidential press secretary, said, “I think it is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation.” Uh-huh. Senator Schumer, the New York Democrat, warned Republicans that they would oppose Sotomayor “at their peril.”
In other words, you don’t mess with Hispanics and their aspirations.
It won’t surprise you to know that I had something to say about this, in “States of Mind”:
Funny, but there was nothing politically perilous about opposing Miguel Estrada. He was the brilliant young lawyer whom President Bush nominated for the D.C. Court of Appeals in 2001. Estrada had come to this country from Honduras at 17. Spoke barely a word of English. Seconds later, he was magna cum laude from Columbia, and seconds after that he was magna cum laude from Harvard Law. Had a sparkling career, impressing one and all. But the Democrats filibustered him, denying him a confirmation vote. They made him slink off in defeat.
One more paragraph:
Schumer said that Estrada was “like a stealth missile — with a nose cone — coming out of the right wing’s deepest silo.” If politics had been friendlier toward him, Estrada might one day have been the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. But that honor will go to someone purer — someone lefter: Sonia Sotomayor. Was Estrada Hispanic at all? Or just a conservative, or assimilationist — or lawyer?
I once had an opportunity to talk with President Bush (43, who nominated him) about Estrada. He was still perturbed about it — about what the Democrats had done to Estrada. I can see his face: that look of weariness, disgust, and contempt.
• Barack Obama became the first black president. I had hoped that the first black president would be a conservative Republican. But history, or someone, decreed otherwise.
I was in Denver in August 2008, covering the Democratic convention. Senator Obama was the nominee. He gave his speech on the final night — a speech I mightily disliked, of course.
The next day, I was in a restaurant, and struck up a conversation with a young man working there — a black kid, about 15. He said, “Were you there last night?” “Yes,” I said. “Did you hear the speech?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. He had a big smile on his face. He was beaming. “It was great, right?” he said. “Yes, it was,” I said.
And it was, in a sense. I could elaborate — on this whole scene — but readers will understand, and I am moving on . . .
• When the new president proposed “ObamaCare,” as it would be dubbed, I opposed it, mightily. A lot of people said that we who opposed it, opposed it because of the president’s race. In response, I said, among other things, “I opposed ClintonCare, too” (or “HillaryCare,” as it was also dubbed). “Virtually every Democrat supports this kind of health-care approach. What in the hell does it have to do with skin color?”
• In this column, I have more than once hailed Donna Brazile, the Democratic politico. She was not my cup of tea, politically, as you can imagine. But I will always hail her — always bless her — for one thing: When President Bush (43) nominated Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of state, Brazile said something like the following: Yes, yes, we all hate Bush. Boo Bush. They’re Republicans, and we’re Democrats. But can we pause, for one second — before we get back to booing — to acknowledge that the next secretary of state will be a black woman? That is a big deal.
• I’m offering tidbits here. Nibble on this, if you like. Condi Rice gave a speech at the 2000 Republican convention, in Philadelphia. Describing her history as a Republican, she said, “I found a party that sees me as an individual, not as part of a group.” She also said, “I found a party that has love of liberty at its core.”
I loved those words. I wonder whether Rice thinks they hold true today.
• Let’s leave the political realm and go to journalism — another political realm, you might say. I have a friend who had a long, excellent career in journalism. She is a conservative. Years ago, she told me, “I’ve gotten several jobs because I am a woman. And women a generation before me were denied jobs, because they were women. Or never sought them in the first place.”
• There is a phrase that sticks in my mind: “Looking for a qualified black since 1914.” Here’s what happened. In 1995, The New Republic published a big piece about racial angst within the Washington Post. You can read about it in an article by Howard Kurtz, published in the Post itself. Let me quote a bit:
The New Republic’s staff is all white, as Post executives were quick to point out. In a letter to the magazine, Post Publisher Donald Graham called it “the last practitioner of de facto segregation since Mississippi changed” and suggested a new motto: “Looking for a qualified black since 1914.”
I’m not saying that Graham’s line was fair. I am saying, it landed, big-time. Which is why I still remember it, these decades later.
• Can I switch to music? I’ve written a lot about race and music. I’ll try to keep it short — and current. But first, I need to go back a bit.
James DePreist was a fairly prominent conductor. He was the nephew of Marian Anderson, the great contralto (“The Lady from Philadelphia”). While in his twenties, he contracted polio, and was thereafter confined to a wheelchair. He kept going. He was a man of considerable courage, as well as talent.
In the late 1980s, the Detroit Symphony was embroiled in a racial controversy. I won’t spell it all out now. But the gist of it is: They dropped blind auditions, in order to hire a black musician. Otherwise, they would have lost state funding.
Around this time, the orchestra approached DePreist about becoming its music director. He got the clear sense that they were interested in him because of his race — so he begged off. “It is impossible for me to go to Detroit, because of the atmosphere,” he said. “People mean well, but you fight for years to make race irrelevant, and now they are making race an issue.”
• Today, there are many female conductors. Some of them are hired because of their sex (or “gender,” as we say now). One of them said the following, not long ago: “Yes, I’m getting engagements because I’m a woman. In the past, though, I was denied them, for the same reason.”
Are mediocre female conductors getting hired today? I’m sure. Have mediocre male conductors been hired since forever, and are they being hired still? I’m sure.
• A week and a half ago, this obit was published in the New York Times: “Everett Lee, Who Broke Color Barriers on the Conductor’s Podium, Dies at 105.” The subheading: “He was known as the first Black conductor on Broadway and the first to conduct a white orchestra in the South. Mr. Lee went on to a successful career in Europe.” He had to spend the major part of his career in Europe, rather than his home country. He was born in Wheeling, W.V. (Also the hometown of Eleanor Steber, the great soprano.) He died in a hospital near his home in Malmö, Sweden.
• I think I will knock off now. We could go on, and on. But I’ve written enough to satisfy, or dissatisfy, everyone. We have a saying in golf: “Every shot pleases somebody.” Right and Left should have enough to like in this column, and enough to hate. I’m not sure I care, Scarlett.
By and large, I’m an individualist. I think people should be judged as individuals (if judged they must be). A group mentality does a lot of harm, in my book. When should race, ethnicity, or sex enter the question, when it comes to hiring and such? Damn rarely, I’d say. Okay, when? Is redress ever justified? Yes, I think so. When, exactly? How?
I’d be hard-pressed to give a clear-cut answer. I don’t think the question is black-and-white (pardon the expression). A lot of people are sure, one way or the other. They have the confidence of any guy at the bar. But I’m not sure the guy at the bar actually knows.
Over the years, in various contexts, I have quoted A. M. Rosenthal, the late executive editor of the New York Times (and good friend of William F. Buckley Jr.). Somebody asked him how he edited the paper. Rosenthal replied, “With my stomach.”
That’s how you have to judge, I think — how you have to assess these things: with your stomach. Of course, stomachs disagree. And your stomach may feel one way on Tuesday, another way on Friday.
Check you later, everyone. Thanks.
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