You have got to be kidding. You know perfectly well Supremes aren’t selected because they are “the best person for the job”. You are going to tell me Kavanaugh was the most respected legal scholar in all the land?
Not only am I not “troubled” i am happy- that’s a great idea. Should have been done some time ago.
It’s outrageous. I thought we decided as a nation that choosing someone based on race or gender was a bad thing. As I said, if you did that at your business you would be breaking the law.
If Trump says that his next Supreme Court pick would be a white Protestant male, would you be okay with that?
The idea that only one person in the entire United States would be best qualified for a vacant court seat is absurd. There is always bias in these situations, and not necessarily pernicious bias: people favor a certain temperament over others, certain types of achievements over other types, and so on. As someone noted above, Kavanaugh’s appointment was hardly the result of an objective vetting process; he does not “just happen” to be a white dude from a privileged background.
As a rule, with very few exceptions, it’s ALWAYS “white male”, unless one specifically decides to go against the grain. That’s why we need to go against the grain, so that we can demonstrate that non-white-males do things just as well as white males. But as long as white males are in charge almost everywhere, unless they specifically decide not to, they’re generally going to pick white males as the next in line.
As a rule, with very few exceptions, it’s ALWAYS “white male”, unless one specifically decides to go against the grain. That’s why we need to go against the grain, so that we can demonstrate that non-white-males do things just as well as white males. But as long as white males are in charge almost everywhere, unless they specifically decide not to, they’re generally going to pick white males as the next in line.
I agree that there is no one solely qualified person. But like anything else, when you are selecting from among a handful of good people, you shouldn’t use race or gender as a consideration.
If you say that the next person you are going to hire for an open position must be a woman/man/black/white then you are excluding a whole lot of qualified people based upon racial or gender considerations. I was taught that was a bad thing.
If the black woman sets herself apart from the other candidates, then by all means hire her. But don’t exclude the white woman or the white male or the black male because the person doesn’t meet your racial or gender criteria.
When you do that, you lose the moral argument. I don’t see how you can tell a racist that he cannot solely hire white men. If you are allowed to make race based decisions, why can’t he?
I think there is merit to ensuring that the legal opinions of the courts come from a diverse set of backgrounds and life experiences ultimately representative of the population. Having 9 justices all come from a wealthy, ivy league background (for example) may mean that there is all sort of unconscious bias in the court, and only a single viewpoint to an thorny legal issue that may be blinded from seeing alternatives.
Having someone on the court with a military background, or came from poverty and had to work their way through law school waiting tables, or has a different ethnic/cultural/religious background than the currently WASP heavy court are all good things to consider as deciding factors.
We know you don’t believe this. We have seen your posts on the draft and other topics.
Correction for the above post: Scratch the “P” in WASP, since all of the current justices have their religion specified as either Catholic or Judaism (or were raised Catholic in the case of Gorsuch)
There is certainly danger in the idea of limiting a field for public office based on gender or ethnicity just to improve representation. In the long run I think it tends to undermine such efforts, by suggesting that power can be gifted to people from underrepresented groups, when in fact power must be won if it is to mean anything at all.
But I don’t think that’s what Biden’s up to. For one thing, I’d be amazed if he didn’t already know exactly who he is talking about. For another thing, far from being tokens granted for moral or ideological reasons, these are surely calculated political moves to buttress his support in the party. The people Biden intends to fill those roles will have got there by accumulating the necessary political capital to be considered his best options under the circumstances. Power so achieved is most certainly ‘won’ rather than ‘gifted’, making these genuine steps towards greater representation.
In this society that was dominated by white supremacism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry for so, so long, without deciding “it’s long overdue for a black person/woman/gay person/etc.” for some notable position, we wouldn’t have had Jackie Robinson; we wouldn’t have had Thurgood Marshall; we wouldn’t have had Sandra Day O’Connor; we wouldn’t have had countless other “firsts”. In an unfair and biased society like this one, it just doesn’t happen until someone, finally, makes the decision to make it happen. That’s why it’s not just okay, but a positive good, when someone in power decides to put a qualified “first” in some particular notable position.
Were those people just tokens, or were they actually the best qualified for the job at hand?
As I attempted to point out above, there is really no “objective” or unbiased measure of who is the most-qualified (as opposed to well-qualified) for many positions. There are probably dozens of jurists in this country who would make excellent Supreme Court justices. By what mechanism could you claim to objectively, definitively choose the most qualified? Could there be a competing, equally valid set of criteria?
There is no “best qualified” for this kind of position, IMO. That’s a political/marketing messaging term. There’s “well qualified”, and plenty of candidates who meet that. We should pick the well qualified candidate who best helps our society move forward.
Absolutely. And an individual’s gender, ethnicity, background, etc. are not irrelevant considerations, especially where political capital is concerned.
Where it’s a problem is where the decision is made to limit a field for the sake of representation without regard to the virtues of the actual available candidates.
Your last sentence describes the best qualified candidate.
The point is not to limit the field in advance of seeing who is available.
Imagine the dems insisting representation demanded a female candidate in 2008 without waiting to see who threw their hats in the ring…
I see no reason to believe Biden limited his field. Either he’s already made his selection, or he had a wide field earlier and has already narrowed it down to a group of women.
And a nomination for a running mate is different than the primary process.
Which is exactly why I said it’s not an example of tokenism, but rather actual progress.
The people he intends to appoint will be there because they got themselves there, not because he’s gifting it to them.
Fair enough. But with multiple qualified candidates, I don’t see a problem even if he went at it the other way – deciding in advance that he was going to pick the best woman for the job. Our society is so profoundly tilted that decisions like that are necessary.