The prospect of the U.S. Supreme Court having its first African American woman justice does not appear to be sitting well with Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi.
Wicker lashed out on Saturday against President Joe Biden for making the as-yet-unnamed woman jurist a “beneficiary” of affirmative action. Here’s how it was reported at the Mississippi Free Press:
“The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” Wicker told host Paul Gallo on SuperTalk Mississippi Radio today, referring to a pending U.S. Supreme Court case challenging affirmative action in college admissions.
“The majority of the court may be saying writ large that it’s unconstitutional. We’ll see how that irony works out.”
Even setting aside the detail that Biden has long supported affirmative action -- as do as many as 62 percent of Americans -- Wicker apparently missed some irony of his own, as observed by the Free Press:
“Wicker notably did not raise an objection when former President Donald Trump vowed to appoint a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she died weeks before the 2020 election. Instead, the GOP senator enthusiastically supported Trump’s choice, Amy Coney Barrett, a white woman, despite having stated in 2016 that then-President Barack Obama should not be allowed to appoint a U.S. Supreme Court justice in an election year. Studies show that white women benefit more from affirmative action than any other group.”
The newspaper also observed, as have many others, that President Ronald Reagan had made (and kept) a famous campaign promise to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court.
“Even aside from Trump’s 2020 vow to appoint a woman to replace Ginsburg, Biden’s pledge to announce a historic appointment is not unprecedented. As a Republican presidential candidate in 1980, Ronald Reagan promised to appoint the first woman to the court in history. He appointed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a white woman.”
Wicker attempted to downplay his obvious displeasure by trying to couch his objections in partisan terms, as a southern white conservative does. More from the Free Press:
“Despite not knowing who Biden will nominate, Mississippi’s senior senator predicted that Biden’s pick will be less palatable to Republicans like himself than the white, male justice who currently holds the seat. He compared the unannounced nominee to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who became the high court’s first Latina justice when former President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009.
“We’re going to go from a nice, stately liberal to someone who’s probably more in the style of Sonia Sotomayor,” Wicker said. “… I hope it’s at least someone who will at least not misrepresent the facts. I think they will misinterpret the law.”
And there was this:
“I guarantee you this, Paul, this new justice will probably not get a single Republican vote, but we will not treat her like the Democrats did Brett Kavanaugh. It was one of the most disgraceful, shameful things and completely untruthful things that the Democratic Judiciary majority has ever, ever done.”
The newspaper noted that, during his 2018 confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh “faced allegations of sexual misconduct, with Christine Blasey Ford testifying under oath to the U.S. Senate that the nominee once tried to rape her at a party when he was younger.”
It also observed that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas -- like Kavanaugh -- had “joined the court amid allegations of sexual misconduct during his nomination, with law professor Anita Hill testifying under oath the he subjected her to sexual harassment at work.”
Thomas was selected by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 to replace the great Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement. Marshall had been the first Black person to serve on the high court.
Presumably, Bush’s choice of a Black judge to replace the only Black Justice in American history was a “race-conscious” decision, in the parlance of affirmative-action. Unless it was just a happy coincidence that both were Black.
One of Thomas’ assets in the minds of Republicans was his own steadfast opposition to affirmative action. To paraphrase Wicker, we’ve seen how that irony works out.
