Conservative politicians, activists, and intellectuals didn’t try to hide their disdain when Joe Biden publicly promised to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. Even though it’s unclear who will run, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker has already decided not to support this affirmative action “beneficiary” because the announcement was “offensive,” according to Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
It showed that President Obama didn’t care about 94% of Americans everyone who isn’t a Black woman. Ilya Shapiro, the vice president of the Cato Institute, described Biden as a “lesser Black woman,” and the conservative legal establishment vowed to fight back against her.
When it comes to “exclusionary criteria of race and gender,” legal scholar Jonathan Turley lamented the fact that only when they result in the selection of someone who is not a white man, are they a problem. Just remember that the Supreme Court has had only seven non-white male members in its 232-year history. Seven.
It is precisely the fact that this alarming response appears to be at odds with the conservative majority on the court that tells us much about how the right views the political conflict.
It’s important to recognize the racist and sexist nature of these reactions before assessing their impact. They are revealing because they were so instinctive, so impulsive, and so immediate. This conservative contempt is rooted in misogynoir or anti-Black misogyny.
In addition, there’s a lot of other stuff going on here. The arithmetic of the court will remain unchanged if Justice Breyer is replaced by a Black woman.
Because they see it as a recognition that having white men dominate the powerful institutions of American life is a problem, conservatives still feel threatened by Biden’s announcement because they understand that it symbolizes the recognition that rectifying this imbalance is an urgent task.
Because they know that representation matters and that a Black woman ascending to a position like this is also an acknowledgment of past injustice, they reject the idea that the country’s institutions should reflect the population.
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When it comes to conserving the “real”, conservatives see Biden’s announcement as evidence of how powerful the forces of liberalism, “wokeism,” and multiculturalism already are.
As a result, Biden’s pledge is seen as yet another indication that the Right is losing ground. In order to understand conservative politics, one must first deal with this pervasive siege mentality.
A generation-long majority of conservative justices on the Supreme Court doesn’t alleviate these concerns. The Right sees the Court as part of a larger conflict over the future of the United States, not as a stand-alone issue.
They understand that this conflict is not just a political one, but affects every aspect of American life, from politics to society to culture–and that conservatives are losing in some of these areas.
Right-wingers are reacting to the reality that the country has become less white, less conservative, and less Christian as a result of political, cultural, and demographic changes.
Because of the many undemocratic distortions in the US political system, the political power balance does not yet reflect these changing demographic and cultural realities. Conservatives, on the other hand, are well aware that their vision for American society is under threat.
Obama’s presidency symbolized this threat to white dominance better than any other because he was re-elected with less than 40% of the white vote – an outrageous subversion of what reactionaries understand as America’s natural order. It’s no secret that Republicans want to undermine democracy because they know full well that their preferred vision of “real” America will never win over a majority of Americans.
Conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court, ensuring that the court will back the reactionary political project.
This is a fact… Cultural dominance and affirmation are also important to them. The shift in cultural power away from white conservatives has been more pronounced, resulting in the recurring right-wing moral panics of recent years.
Because traditionally marginalized groups have gained political and cultural influence, the #MeToo, “cancel culture,” and “wokeism” freak-outs are a response to this fact.
A white male elite has traditionally had the power to decide what is and is not acceptable in American society. The judiciary can’t fully restore that prerogative, which has come under fire.
It’s important to keep in mind that these irrational fears are sparked more by the fear of losing one’s power. Traditional power structures have generally held up well in practice.
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White men’s privilege has never been more scrutinized, however. For white men, being a member of the “elite” has become a little less palatable.
Against this backdrop, conservatives see Biden’s announcement as evidence that the dreaded forces responsible for the general assault on white male rule continue to rise within American institutions.
As long as a movement based on the belief that the United States of America is a white Christian patriarchal nation, where white Christian men have the right to rule and dominate, a Black woman’s rise remains a threat to the supreme court’s decisions.
His promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court is an affirmation of multi-racial pluralism, as demonstrated by his public announcement. Therefore, it is important.
White men’s longtime dominance was never the result of meritocratic structures, but rather a discriminatory system, and it’s time to dismantle that system.
As a result, it will help to reshape the nation’s conception of what the American political, social, and cultural elites look like. When our democracy is under attack because of its multiracial and pluralistic makeup, this is of critical importance.
