Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during a Senate hearing in Washington on March 21, 2022. afp_tickers This content was published on March 24, 2022 2:41 PM. March 24, 2022 2:41 p.m. (AFP)
Kind but firm, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson approached her nomination to the US Supreme Court this week with a clear sense of being a “role model” for African Americans.
This 51yearold attorney was chosen in late February by Democratic President Joe Biden, who promised during his campaign to appoint a black woman to the US Supreme Court for the first time in history.
“Since then I’ve received so many messages, letters and photos from little girls from all over the country who have expressed their excitement to me…” Jackson said during a marathon hearing before the senators evaluating his candidacy. “Because I’m a woman, a black woman, means a lot to people.”
Without insisting on the color of her skin, the lawyer paid tribute to all those who helped her get to this stage, starting with her parents, who “to show her pride in her heritage and her hope for the future, gave her an African baby Name, Ketanji Onyika, meaning “the Sorceress”.
Unlike them, who “have personally experienced racial segregation” and “faced many obstacles,” Jackson noted his “luck” at being born after the great civil rights struggles of the 1960s that brought down many racial laws.
“All Americans”
Ketanji Brown Jackson was able to attend coeducational schools in Florida, where she excelled in eloquence contests, earned a degree from the prestigious Harvard University, and developed a rich career, most notably as an attorney and later as a federal judge, while building a family with a white surgeon.
Now on the doorstep of the Supreme Court — and with his confirmation almost certain — he hopes his career will boost African Americans’ “trust” in the justice system. “People will understand that the courts are like them, that we judges are like them,” he said.
Repeatedly asked by Republican Senator Ted Cruz about specific Black thinkers and activists or his knowledge of “critical race theory,” which analyzes the institutional aspects of racism, Jackson maintained a universalist message: “It is a moment of which all Americans are proud should be.
Seven months before the midterm elections, several Republican opposition lawmakers used the hearings to address their campaign issues: the fight against crime, against abortion, the treatment of transgender minors.
Without breaking his polite tone, Jackson refused to engage in their ideological struggles, repeatedly emphasizing his “neutrality,” “independence,” or even “impartiality.”
“My star”
But he showed emotion, even a degree of weariness, when he was accused by some Republican senators of having been lenient as a judge in child pornography cases.
“Nothing is further from reality,” he said. “I still have nightmares to this day,” she explained, noting that as a mother, cases of child sex crimes were particularly distressing.
“How dare you say you’re negligent?” Black Sen. Cory Booker later said, noting that Justice Jackson had the support of police unions and former prosecutors, and that several members of her family served in law enforcement.
“You are here because you deserve it” and “No one will take my joy away!” he continued, in an intervention that moved the judge to tears.
“You are much more than your skin color or your gender (…) But if you’ll excuse me, it’s hard for me to look at you and not see my mother or my cousins,” confessed Booker.
“And today,” he continued, “you’re my star, it’s a message of hope: this country just keeps getting better!”