Opinion: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dismissal of critical race theory is disappointing | Opinion

It was disappointing to listen to Supreme Court docket justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson distance herself from vital race principle in her affirmation hearings on Tuesday, March 22. 

Prompted by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s questioning, Jackson responded, “It doesn’t come up in my work as a decide. It’s by no means one thing that I’ve studied or relied on, and it wouldn’t be one thing that I’d depend on if I used to be on the Supreme Court docket.” It’s well-known that vital race principle has been labeled by the far-right as racist. This is similar proper that has led the GOP to sanction the violent assault on democracy of Jan. 6, 2021, as “legitimate political discourse.” It’s this attitude on vital race principle that Jackson implicitly affirms when she not solely says that she doesn’t however wouldn’t put it to use. 

Her disavowal permits the precise to retain management over how oppressed folks search to know their oppression, articulate that understanding to themselves, and make the most of data as a instrument of resistance. In the course of the civil rights battle of the Sixties, each the non-violent and confrontational positions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X have been thought-about on the very least inappropriate. King’s Civil Disobedience methods, similar to sit-ins, have been met with violent responses that one would assume may solely be reserved for armed and violent resistance. 

As an educational idea, vital race principle has produced closely researched and vetted articles and books that search to know and articulate why minorities proceed to expertise systemic and structural racism that results in damaging financial, well being, authorized, penal and different outcomes. It has not led to something on the order of the Jan. 6 assault on Congress, but we’re made to really feel as if it should be feared as one thing lower than “respectable political discourse.” What’s extra, the truth that the present nationwide assault on no matter the precise identifies as vital race principle has in actual fact yielded tangible, political and authorized outcomes similar to Texas’s H.B. 3979 and H.B. 2497 implies that the structural racism that vital race principle identifies does certainly exist. But, the questioning of decide Jackson in an try to make her answerable for the sector implies that the system succeeds in not solely decreasing systemic causes to particular person selections but in addition in blinding us to the previous. 

It will in fact be politically dangerous for Jackson to embrace vital race principle. Nonetheless, her disavowal is a basically missed alternative to make the plain level: the Biden administration’s initiative to appoint a black lady to the nation’s highest courtroom is certainly an affirmation of the truth that racism will not be restricted to particular person actions or selections however is woven into the very methods which have made it such that there has certainly by no means been a black lady on the courtroom. If racism weren’t in actual fact structural, systemic and interwoven throughout a number of social methods, our misguided state senator wouldn’t have the ability to query Jackson in a manner that white nominees wouldn’t be questioned and concurrently constrain her response.

Shona Jackson is an affiliate professor within the Division of English at Texas A&M.