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Part of the tragic dirge being sung for white men everywhere in anticipation that the 111th justice named to the Supreme Court won't be a white man like the other 96 percent is the notion that, by picking someone who is not a white man, Obama would be choosing identity over issues. Ben Wittes made this argument this Sunday in The Washington Post:
The core constituency that Republicans must satisfy in high court nominations is the party's social conservative base, which fundamentally cares about issues, not diversity, and has accepted white men who practice the judging it admires.This is an absurd observation, based on the idea that only people of color and women are influenced by their backgrounds, while (usually) white men are monuments to impartiality. The last three justices nominated by Republicans after David Souter were male Catholics. Are we to believe that their identities didn't factor into their selection (ahem)? The reason Thomas, Alito, and Roberts were chosen is because their religious and gender backgrounds provided conservatives with reassurance that they would vote the way they were expected to on issues like choice. Obama has said he doesn't want the court to "become the rubber stamps of the powerful in society." To the extent that "identity" matters to liberals, it matters because, like the male Catholics so favored by conservatives, someone who knows what it's like to face discrimination and bias will have a particular perspective on the issues facing the court.
There's no discrepancy between liberals and conservatives when it comes to identity and picking a justice, there's only a social perspective permeating the press that believes universality lies at the intersection of whiteness and maleness.
-- A. Serwer
