Ketanji Brown Jackson to be first Black woman to sit on Supreme Court - Jordan Peterson has something to say - is he right or is he in the wrong?

[zapatos]

1 minute ago, MSC said:

Apparently, because it's racist to point out the demographic makeup of the court... somehow? I don't know anymore. It's the same level of pedanticness that turns people off of the PC thing. 

Besides intent; there is also the spirit in which something is said or done. Ultimately this was all done in the spirit of inclusion and equity. As for the objections, I don't know how you argue it is with the same spirit as the above, when what is being objected to is inclusive speech and an open desire for more fairness. It certainly wasn't for Ted Cruz. 

The thing that I have the most trouble with is that everyone who objected to the announcement also claims the objection has nothing to do with race.

And yet of the hundreds (thousands?) of announcements Biden has made, on issues or initiatives large and small, the only announcement that seems worthy of criticizing for the words he used, is the one that has to do with race.

Now I recognize that the concern raised is more nuanced than that, but it follows a pattern whereby anytime a minority takes a step closer to equality, their progress often undergoes an extreme amount of scrutiny. Look at gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, women voting or moving into fields previously occupied by men, interracial marriage, or absolutely any step forward made by blacks in the US.

I suspect we could devote an entire thread to what motivate people on debates surrounding civil liberties.

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

The thing that I have the most trouble with is that everyone who objected to the announcement also claims the objection has nothing to do with race.

And yet of the hundreds (thousands?) of announcements Biden has made, on issues or initiatives large and small, the only announcement that seems worthy of criticizing for the words he used, is the one that has to do with race.

Since Reagan basically did the same thing Biden did, except he claimed he'd nominate a woman to the SCOTUS if she was qualified, it seems many folks nowadays just assumed a black woman wouldn't have those qualifications. And then GOP leadership treated Jackson like she was stinking up the place, enforcing systemic prejudice and doing their best to make sure an eminently qualified black woman would not move forward. My ass it had nothing to do with race.

[J.C.MacSwell]

8 hours ago, zapatos said:

The thing that I have the most trouble with is that everyone who objected to the announcement also claims the objection has nothing to do with race.

What exactly do you mean?

Everyone where? Here? And which announcement are you referring to? The actual nomination announcement for KJB or the pre-announcement that it would be based on a specific race? (and gender)

[zapatos]

40 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

What exactly do you mean?

Everyone where? Here? And which announcement are you referring to? The actual nomination announcement for KJB or the pre-announcement that it would be based on a specific race? (and gender)

I meant everyone here.

The pre-announcement.

[Intoscience]

15 hours ago, swansont said:

The announcement was made at a campaign speech in South Carolina, which has a large population of black people who tend to vote for democrats, if that helps.

How so?

I'm having trouble seeing how a promise that certain people - not just white men - will have representation in his administration is demeaning.

Ok Thanks,

I think that he stated the next person will be... and it was based on colour and gender which might infer the choice was already made to appease people. This intent could be viewed as demeaning because it could be interpreted as the person was only chosen because of colour and gender rather than qualification required for the job. 

KJB maybe more than qualified and an excellent choice based on her capability and qualification, this should be first & foremost. The pre-announcement potentially invalidated the selection criteria process by appearing to put colour and gender first and foremost, which is exactly the thing modern society is trying to eradicate. 

So based on this I can see how it could be negatively viewed.  

13 hours ago, zapatos said:

The thing that I have the most trouble with is that everyone who objected to the announcement also claims the objection has nothing to do with race.

I'm also confused by what you mean?

My objection (if you want to call it that) is that intentionally or not, the pre-announcement that the next person will be a person of a certain gender and a certain colour goes against the very thing that modern society is trying to eliminate. Selection based on a person's colour, race, gender, religion, sexual identity... 

In my opinion, I just don't think the pre-announcement was necessary, or rather if so, it could have been delivered better.   

Edited April 26, 2022 by Intoscience
spelling

[J.C.MacSwell]

7 hours ago, zapatos said:

I meant everyone here.

The pre-announcement.

Who here is claiming the pre-announcement has nothing to do with race?

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Intoscience said:

This intent could be viewed as demeaning because it could be interpreted as the person was only chosen because of colour and gender rather than qualification required for the job. 

It can be interpreted that way, and was, but only if you ignore facts. So people whose jobs require this bad-faith interpretation ran with that. It became the narrative pushed by the right, and swallowed whole by a large swath of people who listen to such tripe.

The people who "interpret" it this way professionally care not a whit whether PoC were allegedly demeaned. The subset of them in office want to take away PoC's ability to vote. How demeaning is that?

7 hours ago, zapatos said:

I meant everyone here.

The pre-announcement.

I think you've missed some things.

The point some of us have been making is that race and gender were included as factors owing to the perspective such an individual would have, and that perspective is needed, and that's perfectly valid for this situation. But they were not the only factors, and Biden was aware of well-qualified candidates before making the campaign promise, because not only is that a reasonable inference for any candidate who has a long history of holding office, we actually have evidence that he was aware.

3 hours ago, Intoscience said:

My objection (if you want to call it that) is that intentionally or not, the pre-announcement that the next person will be a person of a certain gender and a certain colour goes against the very thing that modern society is trying to eliminate. Selection based on a person's colour, race, gender, religion, sexual identity... 

 

If you want to have a discussion panel on the struggles of <minority group> in society, is it not reasonable to put people from that group on the discussion panel? Doesn't that become a legitimate qualification?

We aren't talking about employment and equal opportunity.

[zapatos]

5 hours ago, Intoscience said:

I'm also confused by what you mean?

 

2 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Who here is claiming the pre-announcement has nothing to do with race?

 

2 hours ago, swansont said:

I think you've missed some things.

 

My apologies for a very murky post.

19 hours ago, zapatos said:

The thing that I have the most trouble with is that everyone who objected to the announcement also claims the objection has nothing to do with race.

 

I was not trying to say the pre-announcement had nothing to do with race. I was saying the objections were not because the candidate was a person of color. The objections were because the President said the candidate would be a person of color. No one here objected to the fact that ultimately a black person was selected to sit on the Supreme Court.

I'll be back. My 3 month old grandson is demanding immediate attention...

[zapatos]

To further clarify the point I didn't make very well earlier...

By definition, conservatives tend to conserve and be somewhat averse to change, especially social change. Thus, I think the objections being raised by some about Biden's pre-selection announcement have something to do with the simple fact that we are progressing. Since conservatives tend to be somewhat averse to change they will often do a lot more analysis and questioning about all the trappings surrounding a change that is happening.

When gay marriage was such a hotbed of debate, conservatives tended to question whether there could simply be a kind of 'separate but equal' arrangement, or whether or not gay marriage would 'destroy the sanctity of marriage', or why gay people couldn't take it slowly to let straight people get used to the idea over time. Progressives on the other hand were more inclined to simply say 'just let it be legal already!' And now that we've had gay marriage for a while, those concerns conservatives had no longer seem so significant to many.

A more recent example is Hollywood's move to be more racially and culturally aware when choosing actors for a role. For example, not too distant arguments that you should pick the 'most qualified' candidate for the role regardless of skin color/culture were ignored, and very few people complained, when Steve Spielberg announced ahead of time that he would choose an Hispanic for the role of Maria in West Side Story. And just to show how important a qualification skin color was to Spielberg for the role, he chose Rachel Zegler, who had exactly two previous credits to her name, one of them being a podcast.

Thus, I think that recent concerns raised regarding Biden's pre-announcement are part of the nature of the conservative mind, are part of the process we must go through as changes occur, and will not seem to be very important in the not too distant future. Similarly, I suspect that in the future conservatives will not be as concerned as they are today about trans-gender athletes, pronouns, politically correct language, and incandescent light bulbs.

[iNow]

I, for one, hope they’ll be very concerned about incandescent bulbs and will have switched to LEDs by then.

[MigL]

I appreciate the clarification, because the pre-announcement was strictly about skin color and gender.
Nothing else was mentioned.

16 hours ago, swansont said:

So people whose jobs require this bad-faith interpretation ran with that.

I still don't see how an interpretation, or subjective perception, can be in 'bad faith'.
You don't get to judge other's perceptions in that way, even if they don't agree with yours.

16 hours ago, swansont said:

The people who "interpret" it this way professionally care not a whit whether PoC were allegedly demeaned.

All of them ?
Do I need to ask for evidence.or at least a citation ?

45 minutes ago, zapatos said:

By definition, conservatives tend to conserve and be somewhat averse to change, especially social change. Thus, I think the objections being raised by some about Biden's pre-selection announcement have something to do with the simple fact that we are progressing.

That seems a rather broad generalization.
It could also be that some people ( not conservative or liberal ) feel that a party and President who champions diversity and equality, without discriminating according to skin color and gender, would choose to give the impression of discriminating, according to those very factors, in the pre-announcement.
While not being a big deal ( to me, anyway ) it does seem to be a poor choice.

Edited April 27, 2022 by MigL

[zapatos]

35 minutes ago, MigL said:

That seems a rather broad generalization.

It is. Not all conservatives think the same way on all issues.

36 minutes ago, MigL said:

It could also be that some people ( not conservative or liberal ) feel that a party and President who champions diversity and equality, without discriminating according to skin color and gender, would choose to give the impression of discriminating, according to those very factors, in the pre-announcement.

Of course.

I cannot tell what motivates an individual, but history tells us that more conservatives than progressives will take exception to the pre-announcement.

[Intoscience]

4 hours ago, MigL said:

It could also be that some people ( not conservative or liberal ) feel that a party and President who champions diversity and equality, without discriminating according to skin color and gender, would choose to give the impression of discriminating, according to those very factors, in the pre-announcement.
While not being a big deal ( to me, anyway ) it does seem to be a poor choice.

This pretty much sums it up for me.  

5 hours ago, iNow said:

I, for one, hope they’ll be very concerned about incandescent bulbs and will have switched to LEDs by then.

Me too,

Though some electricians will squirm at the use of the word "bulbs". I over heard an electrician telling off his apprentice for saying bulbs. He corrected him with "you plant bulbs in a garden! they are lamps not bulbs"  

[Endy0816]

My main thought is that with some 4,000 positions up for grabs, part of what we're voting on is who the President may nominate/appoint once in office.

Other thought is once past the primaries, there's only two real options anyways.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Endy0816

[Phi for All]

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

Though some electricians will squirm at the use of the word "bulbs". I over heard an electrician telling off his apprentice for saying bulbs. He corrected him with "you plant bulbs in a garden! they are lamps not bulbs"  

He's wrong. They're all lamps, but some are configured as bulbs (the bulbous ones), some as floods or spots or reflectors. They're either incandescent or luminescent. 

[iNow]

I'm just happy I know enough to call it a receptacle and not an outlet. 

[swansont]

11 hours ago, MigL said:

I still don't see how an interpretation, or subjective perception, can be in 'bad faith'.
You don't get to judge other's perceptions in that way, even if they don't agree with yours.

If one chooses to ignore easily-obtained facts, presenting one’s view as informed opinion is not a position arrived at in good faith. Propaganda is not presented in good faith. Positions where you hold different groups to a different set of standards are not held in good faith.

People are entitled to their opinions, but opinions are generally based on underlying facts. If you arrive at a different position that I do, that’s one thing. But if someone bases their opinion on things that don’t stand up to any level of scrutiny, I am entitled to think they are full of crap. And people doing this professionally are advancing an agenda. They know they’re full of crap (or they’re just incredibly incompetent)

12 hours ago, MigL said:

All of them ?
Do I need to ask for evidence.or at least a citation ?

You deleted the example I gave, so perhaps you could provide a counterexample of how supportive the GOP is in this regard.  I’ll save you some time - their views on immigration and education probably won’t be helpful 

[CharonY]

It is also relevant to note that specifically the context defines meaning. For example, if one announces that one will look for the best candidate, evidence suggests that this means a white male (in the US). Just because race is not used, it does not mean it is not racialized.

[J.C.MacSwell]

5 hours ago, CharonY said:

It is also relevant to note that specifically the context defines meaning. For example, if one announces that one will look for the best candidate, evidence suggests that this means a white male (in the US). Just because race is not used, it does not mean it is not racialized.

Right. So what's wrong (political deal making aside, which you can respect or not respect for whatever reasons) with announcing, or better yet allowing it to be assumed, that the choice would be based on the best candidate available all things considered, and make one step toward changing that evidence?

[CharonY]

36 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Right. So what's wrong (political deal making aside, which you can respect or not respect for whatever reasons) with announcing, or better yet allowing it to be assumed, that the choice would be based on the best candidate available all things considered, and make one step toward changing that evidence?

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that, except that most folks involved in hiring know that if one wants to hire from a smaller pool (i.e. black woman) it is necessary to do focused searches. Entirely open searches simply favour the status quo. In that regard the process would not be more honest as it means that you suggest an open search, but are not actually using that process.

[MigL]

15 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Entirely open searches simply favour the status quo. In that regard the process would not be more honest as it means that you suggest an open search, but are not actually using that process.

Better to appear a bigot than to appear a liar ???

[CharonY]

Just now, MigL said:

Better to appear a bigot than to appear a liar ???

Again, I do not see evidence anyone thinking of the processes as bigoted aside from political opponents. And in fact, being a bigot was actually shown to be a great driver of votes.

 

I may repeat myself but there is increasing understanding that hiring and evaluation systems are not neutral and also not as meritocratic as we often assumed them to be. Assessing something as suitable or a good fit depends on a lot of parameter, not the least of experiences of the hiring committee.

Rather obviously folks in the committee are most comfortable evaluating CVs and experiences that track with their own. As such, a committee might all provide similar evaluations and it might appear like a fair and meritocratic process, yet folks with non-standard trajectories might be at a severe disadvantage. This in part can lead to a self-reinforcing "leaky pipeline" issue where certain folks do not get into a spot of power where they can influence hiring and retention and therefore will continue to have a harder time advancing. There is no clear solution to the whole thing and all the EDI/diversity training and other measures really are able to do is pointing out biases that one might want to monitor. But as of yet I have not seen a better way than to have at least one potential contrarian voice (assuming everyone acts in good faith).

One gamble that some folks are doing (and again, we are not there yet to have enough data to see whether it works) is to deliberate increase diversity (among suitable candidates) and hope that it sorts out some of the issues on its own. I am not sure whether that will work, either, but considering that it initiates some movement (rather than trying something that clearly has not worked but at least appeared "proper" to some folks) it will at least provide some data.

 

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that, except that most folks involved in hiring know that if one wants to hire from a smaller pool (i.e. black woman) it is necessary to do focused searches. Entirely open searches simply favour the status quo. In that regard the process would not be more honest as it means that you suggest an open search, but are not actually using that process.

It sounds like you are suggesting that the hiring search was in fact limited to black women, and did not just come down to that, as Swansont seems to suggest, at the point of the pre-announcement. (maybe Swansont can correct me if that's incorrect. I do know he also felt it was an announcement of a campaign promise intended to be kept, but IMO that just shifts the blame for him unnecessarily  racializing it to an earlier date). 

I would like to think that being of an unrepresented or underrepresented minority should be considered a significant attribute in the process, enough to make choosing yet another white male unlikely. 

I don't see the need for full honesty beyond that to be frank. If in fact Biden knew of better candidates in his mind it would be rude beyond my objections here for him to have pointed that out, IMO. 

And if Biden had acted as both MigL and I have suggested and just nominated KJB as the best candidate, any objections left based on race would have stood out as pretty unacceptable. I don't know why there is not more agreement here in that regard.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

Again, I do not see evidence anyone thinking of the processes as bigoted aside from political opponents. 

Remember that while 74% of Americans polled disagreed that it should be limited to black women, despite that a majority liked the choice.

Edited April 28, 2022 by J.C.MacSwell

[Peterkin]

Would be appropriate, after all this time, to ask what is pre-announced?

In the case in point, back in May 2020, the presidential candidate promised that, if elected, he would put a Black woman on the Supreme court - at some time during his administration. A promise can be broken, be impossible to fulfill, or changed by changing circumstances. No announcement was made at that time.  

At the end of January, 2022 the president announced his intention of appointing a Black Woman to the recently opened Supreme Court position. (By this time, he had had opportunity to discover how practicable that earlier promise was; whether he would need to rescind, alter, modify or postpone it, or whether he could go ahead with a viable nomination.) Intentions can be thwarted by circumstance, in which case a new, different intention would be announced.

But that did not happen. At the end of February, he announced his intention to nominate  Ketanji Brown Jackson. At that point, the intention was still not a fact; something could still have changed, but the identity of the intended nominee became known, and the nomination was all but certain.

On February 25, the president announced the nomination, and the ratification process began.

So, why all the angst over a pre-announcement that never happened?

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Peterkin

[MigL]

What do you mean it never happened?

According to your timeline he twice made the announcement that he would choose a candidate who is colored and a female.

If he had said he would pick a 'white male' everyone here, including JC and I, would agree he used discriminatory language/criteria.
I fail to understand how anyone can consider the appearance of his two pre-announcements, based on skin color and gender, not discriminatory.