The attacks on Ketanji Brown Jackson won’t tarnish her image: Black Americans

After attending the second day of hearings on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination, Jessica Fullilove, 31, a student at Northern Illinois University College of Law, couldn’t help but feel disillusioned with the process and the Republican senators who she claimed had made a mockery of it.

“It does something to you when you see someone who has worked their tail off, who has pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, who has been the best of the best in everything, who went to Harvard Law, Harvard for undergrad, clerked for a Supreme Court justice and graduated with honours, and yet has their accomplishments diminished,” Fullilove said.

“It dims that light,” she remarked, referring to the hope that America is meant to represent.

On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Jackson to the Supreme Court by a vote of 53-47, with only three Republicans voting in her favor. In interviews, Fullilove and other Black Americans argued that Republican senators like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Josh Hawley’s actions during the confirmation process had tainted what should have been a joyous occasion for all Americans.

Jackson, the first Black woman to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, was accused by some Republican senators of being soft on pedophiles and having a hidden radical agenda, and that she would have supported Nazis at Nuremberg.

“I hate that a Black woman, in particular, had to go through this process and be subjected to such vitriol, and that she was used as a kind of wall for senators to bounce their midterm messaging off of,” said Simone Yhap, 24, a third-year student at Northeastern University School of Law, who was also present for the second day of hearings.

The hearing was held in Washington last month, and Fullilove, Yhap, and other members of the National Black Law Students Association attended. On the third day of hearings, Fullilove said she was especially moved when Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., the sole Black senator on the 22-member Judiciary Committee, told Jackson that he knew the systemic challenges she had to overcome to advance academically and professionally.

Fullilove said Jackson’s nomination has reminded her of the delight and pride she had when Barack Obama was elected president and Kamala Harris was elected vice president 12 years later.

“And now, as I see another history-making appointment with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson approaching, I’m thinking about how I feel,” she remarked.

When comparing herself to family members who went through the Jim Crow era, Fullilove expressed gratitude for witnessing three racial barriers being broken throughout her lifetime.

The tone at Jackson’s hearings was considerably different from the confirmation of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female Supreme Court justice, in 1981, according to Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked for Obama.

Cliff Albright, the founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, predicted that Republican senators would use the hearings to “spread lies and propaganda” in order to damage Jackson and elicit a response from her, so dooming her nomination.

“The ugliness is unsurprising,” Albright added, “but it’s still upsetting.” “Things puts a damper on it in that sense.”

“But it can’t put a damper on it in a larger sense,” he continued. “Because at the end of the day, she’ll be Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the nation’s first Black female Supreme Court justice.”