President Joe Biden has recently announced Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his supreme court nominee, but his decision sparks controversy. In the past decades, there have been leaps and bounds in the fight for equality; however, is there a point where it is no longer equality but instead racism under a different name? 

According to NBC News, Justice Stephen G. Breyer is set to retire at the end of the term. Breyer, at the age of 83, is one of the court’s oldest justices, having been nominated by former President Bill Clinton in 1994. Breyer has plans of retiring due to health reasons. 

President Biden declared to the country his promise to nominate a black woman for his supreme court nominee in replacement of retiring Justice Breyer. A CNN Politics article showed a list of some of the names on his shortlist, including Judge J. Michelle Childs, Justice Leondra Kruger, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

I am not by any means questioning these women’s qualifications. I only wonder if it is considered fair to rule out all white people and males in the running. 

One similarity amongst the women to be considered is their ages. Kruger is only forty-five years old and Childs is fifty-five years old. Brown Jackson is in between Kruger and Childs at fifty-one years old; however, if she accepts, Brown Jackson would be the second-youngest justice on the current court. 

A little about Brown Jackson…she is a democrat. She was born in Washington DC but grew up in Miami, Florida. Both of her parents were teachers and leaders in the Miami-Dade Public School System. In school, Brown Jackson was elected mayor of her middle school student body. 

She faced adversity when she set her sights on going to Harvard. According to a Whitehouse.gov article, Brown Jackson’s high school counselor told her she should aim lower with her future plans. Brown Jackson did not let that stop her, and she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and cum laude from Harvard Law school. Cum laude is a title for someone who graduates with honors. She is married to Dr. Patrick Jackson and has two daughters, 21-year-old Talia and 17-year-old Leila. 

The New York Times stated Brown Jackson has been a clerk for Justice Breyer and a federal public defender in Washington DC. She also was a commissioner on the US Sentencing Commission and was on the district court under the Obama administration. 

There is no question on if she is qualified for the job; however, some can’t help but question the morality behind how she got to the top of Biden’s list of candidates for Supreme Justice.  

Michele Nelson, an English teacher at Sartell High school had done a little research into Biden’s choice.

“The Supreme Court is making decisions for everyone on topics that affect everybody. I think it’s important to have a diverse court. I think it should represent the demographic of what the United States looks like.”   

Brown Jackson is by no means an idiot. She is very experienced and qualified for the position. A question remains though. Should Biden’s decision be racial and gender-based? Biden is being declared a hero by some for wanting to choose a black woman, but if he were to say he wanted a white man, he would be condemned by the public. 

Black women are sorely unrepresented in government. Is the best way to promote equality to discriminate against others? Everyone is calling for equality. I can not help but think that it is not true equality if we are not giving everyone an equal chance. 

What if we are playing the catch-up game? White men have had the advantage for hundreds of years. Perhaps it is only fair to give others the leg up now. To erase discrimination and promote diversity, does the government need to switch the narrative and knock white men from the docket? I have more questions than answers, but at this point, that is all I have, questions and not answers. 

Nelson had a thought on this catch-up game idea, “I don’t know how I feel about that [the catch-up game] either. I think something that could help though is if more people recognize biases in their hiring practices.” 

I can really only hope, like the rest of us, that Brown Jackson will do her job well and have empathy and kindness for everyone.

 A Washington Post article stated Brown Jackson told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “It doesn’t make a difference whether or not the argument is coming from a death row inmate or the president of the United States. I’m not injecting my personal views.” 

This quote is hopeful that Brown Jackson will go in a moral route. Perhaps one day, we will not hire based on gender or the color of skin and only by a person’s qualifications and character.