Interestingly enough, even the president of the United States isn’t immune from the discussion of identity politics and racism. It seems that he is even leaning into it by pledging that the next Supreme Court justice will be a black woman. As the link points out and as everyone kind of knew going in, there was much protesting. Some people have called it reverse discrimination. Then again, it is not completely out of the realm of possibility for conservatives to also play identity politics. Amy Coney Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall. I’m sure those were just coincidences.

What exactly is systemic racism and what can we do to combat it? When institutions and companies make extra efforts to be diverse are they in fact participating in reverse discrimination? These are excellent questions and questions we don’t have easy answers for.

Unless there is a compelling reason, each institution, company, or organization should reflect the overall demographic breakdown of the community it is in. There are notable exceptions where we look foolish for arguing otherwise. Hooters is not going to hire male wait staff. The vast majority of teachers, garbage collectors, and soldiers will be skewed to one gender or another. The vast majority of professional and amateur athletes won’t be a representative sample either.

So, do we make specific efforts to be inclusive when those efforts might stack the deck for a particular position? That of course depends on the specific reason why someone like Biden might be restricting his search. The law impacts different groups in different ways. The court currently has three women on it. It has one African American. Adding an African American woman adds both of those perspectives.

When we measure the presence of racism based on the measurement of the outcome we often paint with a very broad brush. Yesterday, I mentioned the NFL. Jack Easterby was hired by the Texans in 2019 as an executive vice president. Without going into specifics on him we could simply say that it was a position he had never held before.

So, how in the blazes did he get such a position? Obviously, he knew some people and one thing led to another. That’s usually how these things work. The trouble is that when the vast majority of owners and executives are white then the “he knew someone” usually translates into hiring of another white guy. People hire people they are comfortable with or already know. It doesn’t make them a racist per se, but the outcome is a negative one for people of color.

Easterby got his start as a character coach of sorts. A character coach should be adept at relating to players and other employees. They should be comfortable with him. If a majority of the players are African American then wouldn’t it make more sense to have a character coach that is African American? Of course, they hired someone else to be a character coach when Easterby was promoted. He is someone Easterby knew and of course he is also white.

I don’t have any easy answers. This isn’t to say that men can’t relate to women or vice versa. This isn’t to say that people of color can’t relate to white people or vice versa. This isn’t to say that someone that came from money can’t relate to someone that didn’t or vice versa. If relating to special populations is a considerable part of the job then whether or not someone can represent that special population has to be a serious consideration. If we continue go with the “guy we know” then that isn’t likely to happen.

Last week during a speech at Harvard Law School Justice Stephen Breyer warned that “packing the court” by expanding it could erode confidence of the American people in the judgements of the courts.  When I read this my first reaction was that my confidence in the judgements couldn’t be any more eroded, especially after the Heller decision which overturned more than a century of precedent regarding gun safety laws, Citizens United which stupidly claimed that money doesn’t corrupt, Shelby which struck down key protections of the Voting Rights Act, and lately Knight which dismissed the case against Trump for banning critics on his Twitter account even though he used that account for public policy making.

Yesterday EJ Dionne called out Breyer for his position, correctly criticizing him for blaming the wrong side for politicization of the court.  Dionne pointed out the above cases and McConnell successfully stealing a seat when he refused to give Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s seat in 2016 and rushing Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination just a few days before the 2020 election that Trump lost.

Breyer is fantasizing about what the court should be rather than what it’s become, a tool for cementing in extreme rightwing ideology.  Biden is correct to open a commission about the court, and I believe it’s long past time to increase the size of the court to balance its judgments.  A better solution would be to establish term limits for SCOTUS seats, but that is more difficult due to the Constitutional arguments for not have limits.

All that said, it’s long past time to fix the Supreme Court, because what we have now is clowns in charge of the circus, and that damn sure doesn’t give any confidence in its judgements.

Today during Trump’s WH briefing campaign rally he threatened to use a never used presidential power to adjourn Congress.  He threatened this so he could ram through dozens of recess appointments with weirdos and incompetents.  Recall that Congress started never recessing as a tool to keep Barack Obama from doing recess appointments.  Also recall that Obama went to the Supreme Court to get a ruling on that practice…he lost.  Anyone want to bet that the Roberts Court will rule the same against Trump?  I wouldn’t hold my breath since we now live in Trumpland.

American rule of law is dead.

In a rare moment yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts dove into politics by rebuking Chuck Schumer’s criticism of Neil Gorsuch (who is sitting in the seat stolen by Mitch McConnell) and Brett Kavanaugh (best known for boofing, sexual assault, and calendars) who are almost certainly going to vote in a Louisiana abortion case that could undo yet again decades of judicial precedence.  Schumer, speaking at a rally, said that the justices would “pay the price” for an “awful decision”.  Schumer’s office says he was talking about a political price from a grassroots movement if the court strikes down Roe v Wade.  Was Schumer’s rhetoric over the top?  Probably, but let’s talk all of this in context.  The Roberts Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, ruled that money equals speech, lifted all limits for corporations to contribute dark money to political candidates, refused to step in to stop racial gerrymandering, and has contributed to the systematic dismantling of the nation’s gun safety laws.  The abortion case is just another log on the fire.  But all this is not the point.

Roberts publicly rebuked Schumer for his language yesterday, but has ignored jury tampering, intimidation of judges, threats against jurors and judges, and inciting violence towards the judiciary by none other than the president of the United States.  The Court’s conservative majority has also repeatedly endorsed Trump’s racist and illegal immigration policies as well as allowing him to turn the entire US government on its head. The hypocrisy is unsettling, if not shocking, so Roberts sudden concern over Schumer’s language made me burst out laughing when I read his statement yesterday.

Message to Roberts – If you’re concerned about politicians’ rhetoric to the court you need to go buy a mirror, hang it on the wall, and then look deeply into it.  YOU are just a culpable for the disaster that has been made of our system of government and the continuous threats it endures.

So the New York Times has an article today ‘splainin’ why Neil Gorsuch might find it easier than most new Supreme Court Justices to find his voice and “be heard” right way.

Two things: (1) his winkie, and (2) his crazy.

Crazy first.

“Conservatives interrupt liberals at significantly higher rates than liberals interrupt conservatives,” the study, to be published in The Virginia Law Review, found.

“Interruptions are generally considered an aspect of dominance, and the conservatives feel dominant over the liberals. With Gorsuch entering the court, that’s going to reinforce that tendency.”

Which, of course, falls into the No Shoot, Sherlock department of news.  Conservatives are rude people who need to display their dominance like some baboon in the zoo.

And now his winkie.

And male justices, perhaps not surprisingly, interrupt female justices far more often than the other way around. “Even though female justices speak less often and use fewer words than male justices,” the study found, “they are nonetheless interrupted during oral argument at a significantly higher rate.”

The study considered 7,239 interruptions in arguments from 2004 to 2015. Of those, 32 percent were of women, and just 4 percent were by women.

I think Ruth Bader Ginsberg ought to whack that sucker upside the head with her gavel a couple of times and let him know that there are women on the court who ain’t putting up with his Trump’s new golden boy status for one damn minute.

The guy who did the study offered this —

“I don’t think that a lot of men notice that they’re doing this,” Professor Jacobi said.

Oh yeah, right. Yeah, there you go. They just can’t help themselves.