Ketanji Brown Jackson
On April 7, 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson made history. The Senate voted to confirm her appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. Three Republican Senators: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah voted their conscience and joined all fifty Democrats to make the vote 53-47 to confirm. Mrs. Jackson, the first black woman ever nominated to the court will take her place when her mentor, Justice Breyer, steps down. It is a day of bitter sweet enlightenment for our country and for our society.
Sweet for the precedent of a person of unbelievable experience and ability moving into a position she seems to have been born to; bitter for the process she had to endure to gain confirmation. Having watched the Judicial Committee hearings from gavel to gavel, I wasn’t sure she’d actually be confirmed. Although every responsible law enforcement association and every professional law association advocated her nomination, Ketanji Brown Jackson faced an onslaught of obviously coordinated defamation from a handful of Republican Senators. Their attack seemed to have no moral bottom and was made in the most snide and nasty accusations.
As I watched this attack unfold, I shifted uncomfortably and had to get up and walk around, muttering to myself that this is what this great country had devolved into. My growing cynicism about the state of our society and the ugliness of a wing of a major political party washed over me in ugly doubt and anger. Then I witnessed something that will change my life from now on. This woman, sitting alone facing this wave of ugliness, calmly withstood the childish bad manners and with grace and determination tried to explain in intelligent argument why the charges were mistaken in their premise. This woman, facing a den of cowardly jackals would not answer in kind. She was implacable. She was inspiring.
Our concept of heroes is usually defined in male figures enduring overwhelming odds to gain victory. It’s time for a new definition. My new hero is a black woman. My new hero is a black woman who possesses courage, intelligence, integrity, compassion and logic. A human being who stood firm in the face of unbelievable ugliness and bad manners and refused to be ugly and use bad manners in return. She would not be denied. She would not answer in kind. Instead her weapon was patience and kindness…. drawn from a deeper well than her accusers could ever imagine.
It couldn’t have been easy, being scalded by her abusers, accused of unbelievable motives in front of her elderly school teacher parents, her daughter, and her husband. She pulled it off. Only someone of great depth and judicial nature could have done it. She made me believe again. She is the new image of America as it can be. God bless the United States of America and God bless our new Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Gary Moore, Bandera County resident, is a Texas State University graduate, former English and football coach, journalist, script writer and photographer.