Ketanji Brown Jackson Criticism Still Racist All The Way Down

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

When Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was first nominated to the United States Supreme Court, then-Georgetown instructor posted about the nominee (at that point between Jackson and Leondra Kruger) as “lesser black women.” It wasn’t exactly unexpected. When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated, Chicago law professor Todd Henderson called her “a second-class intellect” only nominated for her “Latinaness,” even though he’s the tier of intellect that writes fan fiction about Elon Musk’s legal genius so off base that even Musk retreated from his nonsense stand almost immediately afterward.

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The point is, these ostensibly qualified conservatives stumble all over themselves not just to downplay a Democratic nominee’s accomplishments or qualifications, but to draw a direct line to their ethnicity as the source of their shortcomings. And the shortcoming is never, “I have grave doubts about their dormant commerce clause jurisprudence,” it’s that they’re “lesser” and “second-class.” They never construct any specific, coherent critique beyond “minorities and women are dumb and undeserving.” Or at least some women and minorities are. When Amy Coney Barrett took half the record Jackson had and parlayed it to the Supreme Court, these guys didn’t seem to have any issues.

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It’s all about building a narrative to give succor to even more odious voices to let their — inevitably Confederate — flags fly.

Evangelical MAGA Pastor Shane Vaughn calls SC Justice Jackson “Judge Jumanji Jungle Lips” and says what’s coming out of her lips is “jungle monkey sense.”

He later gives the usual racist ‘apology’ of ‘not having a racist bone in his body,’ then immediately insults her again. pic.twitter.com/M82eT3gOUn

— Mr. Christopher (@iamalmostlegend) April 20, 2024

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The text pretty much sums up the first video. The second clip, on the other hand, is truly wild to behold.

After the first video went viral, Vaughn took to the air to “apologize.”

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Anyone that knows me personally knows that I don’t have a racist bone in my body. But a lot of people don’t know me personally, do they? So they go by what I say. And if you’re just going by what I said that night, you have every right to be offended.

Sure, if you’re going to judge me by my actual behavior this looks bad, but…

Thank you for letting me learn from this experience, and I WILL learn from this experience.

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Aw, well that’s nice. What exactly did he learn from the experience?

I still think she’s a dummy. I still think she talks monkey talk. I still think that she’s ignorant, dumb, and should not be wearing a robe. And should be living in the jungle as Judge Jumanji, okay. But her physical appearance… off limits.

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He’s not learned from the experience, you guys. He thinks the problem was the “lips” line. Which was not NOT the problem! But he might need to take a more expansive view of what what he said because he might still have some racism hanging out in the marrow.

But the important takeaway is that every one of these jerkoffs take their cues from guys like Shapiro and Henderson. Because if the law professors get away with “lesser black women,” what’s stopping them from reaching for the racist framing and pushing it to the limit. To borrow from the apocryphal Churchill (or George Bernard Shaw or Twain) story about prostitution, we’ve already established what the conservative legal movement believes, now we’re just quibbling over how loudly they say it.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

Courts, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Racism, Supreme Court