Marsha Blackburn had strong questions in her opening statement during the day 1 of the #KetanjiBrownJackson confirmation hearing for the US Supreme Court, related to addressing parental rights & Critical Race Theory. Because the senator did not seem to like that the nominee praised the 1619 Project, which rightly calls America fundamentally racist, her line of questioning implied that Judge Jackson could not be fair on racial issues.
"You've made clear that you believe judges must consider critical race theory when deciding how to sentence criminal defendants," Blackburn said.
Continuing she asked, "Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system?"
Opponents of CRT do not want the negative side of American history that shows the oppression of Black people by the White establishment to he taught to school-aged children.
What is Critical Race Theory?
Education Week offers and apt definition thusly: "Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.
The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others."
By the aforementioed definition, those who study deemed it important to examine the tendencies in society to pratice race-based biases legally. COnservatice like Blackburn reject the concept.
As such, the very history that Judge Brown Jackson is making would be omitted from textbooks by implication by Blackburn's understanding of CRT because the creators of the concept recognized the presence of racism in various environments from the workplace to schools and prision. The fact that Jackson is just now the first Black woman being considered for the position is a reflection of systematic biases based on both sex and race, it could be argued. If this argument made it into text books Blackburn would cry foul. But Blackburn took the matter a step further suggesting that Jackson plans to institute her beliefs about race in the "legal system."
Judge Jackson offered a similar definition to the one above, noting that she has never used CRT in her cases and that she thought it was only taught at the law school level.
It was racially insensitive to imply Jackson has an ulterior motive to allow CRT to be taught and promote racial bias in favor of Black people all in one grand mischaracterization of the nominee's beliefs.