Racial epithets not necessarily hostile
The NAACP has thoughts on Amy Coney Barrett.
We have reviewed Amy Coney Barrett’s record on civil rights, including her writings as a law professor and her three years as an appellate court judge. On issue after issue, we have found her to be stunningly hostile to civil rights. Her aggressive view of when past decisions should be overruled, combined with her reactionary positions on what rights the Constitution protects, will jeopardize our hard-fought wins in the Court. Her scholarship questions even foundational principles such as whether the Fourteenth Amendment was properly adopted and whether Brown v. Board of Education remains viable authority. Her repeated endorsement of discrimination in the workplace—including the stunning conclusions that separate can be equal when it comes to race and that the use of racial epithets does not necessarily create a hostile work environment—mark a clear willingness to jettison longstanding civil rights precedents.
Let’s not have her on the Supreme Court.
It’s funny, but the one thing there I don’t immediately disagree with is the notion that using a racial epithet is not always hostile. Of course, a whole lot rides on what is intended by use there.
On the topic of the NAACP and the Supreme Court: when Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court, Bush Sr. found a right-wing Black man to replace him, apparently on the assumption that it would be hypocritical of liberals to oppose a Black man. And now when RBG dies, Trump chooses a radical right wing woman to replace her, on the theory that feminists should support her because she’s a woman.
So who’s playing identity politics?
WaM, I’ve seen a former Republican (and still a conservative) refer to her as “affirmative action for the right”. Take away her time teaching law (which honestly isn’t worth much) and she’s got 8 years legal practice. She’s under qualified and has been proposed simply because she’s the youngest most right wing candidate they think they can push through.
Funny how it’s the Republicans who keep putting under-qualified mediocrities on the Supreme Court.
It’s also the Republicans who keep putting under-qualified mediocrities in the White House. Of course, the current occupant would have to improve by several orders of magnitude to become a mediocrity.
The Republicans have a way of electing presidents who make you think “Well, maybe the last one wasn’t so bad.” We’ve gone from Eisenhower to Nixon to Reagan to Bush Jr. to Trump (with Ford and Bush Sr. basically being accidents of history), each a step down. I shudder to think what comes next.