Two Blast from the Past Re-Post about the Supreme Court, Affirmative Action, and Black Women

Kamala Harris (Kevork Djansekian/Getty); Janice Rogers Brown (Win McNamee/Getty); Leah Ward Sears (Schiff Harden LLP)

In light of the sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scala, Presidents Obama's vow to fill the vacancy ASAP, and the GOP's promise to obstruct him,  EYE invite readers to read these post written the last time there was a vacancy on the supreme court.

I thought Affirmative Action and Quotas were behind us. 

Seriously, I thought with the election of Barack Obama, America had entered a "post racial" era, and the country had "moved past race" (what ever the heck that means)? Evidently it's not about being the most qualified, or the "content of ones character" when it comes to United States Supreme Court nominees. Evidently it's about being white, attending Yale or Harvard, and being Catholic and/or Jewish. Qualified, competent, protestant/atheist, African Americans, male or female need not apply. Especially if you didn't matriculate at Yale or Harvard.
During the selection process, Obama reviewed the writings of two dozen potential Justices. That list was narrowed to 10 for more research. Obama and Biden spoke with four candidates privately, including both Kagan and Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood, who were both finalists last year for the open seat that went to Sonia Sotomayor. Klain said Obama heard from several Senators about a desire to find someone, like Kagan, who had not already served as a judge.

Update:  According to Presidential Adviser David Axelrod, Justice Antonin Scalia rooted for Elena Kagen's nomination.  Who knew?

Less than a day after Scalia's death, David Axelrod, in a CNN blog post, shared a little-known anecdote about the 79-year-old justice: He was pulling for the nomination of liberal Justice Elena Kagan.
As President Barack Obama's senior advisor at the time, Axelrod recalled Scalia bending his ear over who should replace the retiring Justice David Souter while the two were tablemates at the 2009 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Affirmative Action is for white women only 

I find it troubling President Obama cites the trials and tribulations of the late civil rights activist Dr. Dorothy I. Height when she was refused admittance to Barnard College because they already had their quota of African American women, then over looks highly qualified Judge Diane Woods in favor of the less qualified Solicitor General Elana Kagen.

RedEye 

With the death of Antonin Scalia, President Obama has the opportunity to nominate the first black, female justice. (originally published July 8, 2013)

RedEye Around the Web

Despite White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's assertion  "now is not the time to talk about  gun control laws",  and  keep we the peeps from demanding gun control legislation in wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, "We the People" petition site is the  most popular ever. 

"Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress," it says. "While a national dialogue is critical, laws are the only means in which we can reduce the number of people murdered in gun related deaths."

Guns don't kill people...oh wait...guns actually do really kill people.  The argument that "Guns don't kill people....people kill people" is a fallacy that needs to be held up to the ridicule that it deserves.

Does anyone really think that guns aren’t the important part of this equation? How many people would be alive today if the possession of guns had been tightly controlled? How many would be celebrating this Christmas with their loved ones if the assault weapons ban hadn’t been allowed to lapse?

How about some media control too?  The media narrative is out of control.  However this is the same media who enabled Bush and Company to take our troops to war based on dead wrong intelligence.....

 And finally, let's get the facts right, guys, okay? Pretty much everything reported on the shooting in the first few hours turned out (once again) to be completely wrong. And that is not even counting all the breathless speculation which I'm positive went out over the 24-hour news networks (which I refused to watch as the story unfolded, just on general principles). When you're on the air non-stop, and there is little or no information, don't try to scoop everybody else when you have not checked your facts. The police have gotten a lot better about refusing to release information until facts are known (and the police, to be fair in this instance, did release erroneous information which the media dutifully reported), but the news media itself needs to do a much better job of policing what goes out over their airwaves in the first few hours of any breaking story.

Grand Old White Male Party gets diversity memo.   I thought republicans didn't believe in affirmative action and quotas?  Anyhoo...meet the soon to be only African American Senator serving in the United States Senate from the red state of South Carolina, Tim Scott (r. Tea Party).

 He will do the bidding of the Good Old Boy network down there, which should be profoundly depressing most of the time. Perhaps there will be some hope for him somewhere down the line. He seems like a genuinely nice person of deep religious faith who has a permanent smile plastered on his face.

Red State Protest in the Reddest of the Red States....also known as Sweet Home Alabama.  Yee Haw!

As if Mitt Romney’s 61 percent performance in Alabama wasn’t proof enough, most of the state’s Republican electors wore red clothing Monday to highlight Alabama’s red state status.

RedEye signing off!

Update~ Affirmative Action is for white women only.

I hate to say it but, republican Senator Mitch McConnell is right (pun intended), Supreme Court nominee Elana Kagen doesn't have judicial experience therefore she is not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

According to some democrats, that's not a problem. The question I have is why is it not a problem? Did President Obama hand the republicans a valid reason to oppose her nomination? I say, YES he most certainly did.

It's supposed to be the most qualified, remember? If you match Solicitor General Elana Kagens' resume side by side with 7th circuit judge Diane Woods, Woods is the most qualified. What would/could the goppers criticism of Judge Woods nomination be? That she is too black? They certainly can't say she isn't qualified.

Is it open season on black women? Are black women destined to be undervalued and marginalized? Are black women destined to be stereotyped as angry,  promiscuous, baby making, welfare queens, nanny's, cooks and hand maids?

Black women also get oddly, back-handedly criticized for being too functional — for being the majority of black college graduates and growing old alone. In reality, black women with college degrees are more likely to have married by age 40 than those with high school degrees (70 to 60 percent).

Black women also get criticized for being uppity and told to "stay in her place", which I believe is why my front page privileges were revoked,  and,  I was eventually banned from my former sandbox. Prior to my banning I was repeatedly warned to "tone down my rhetoric" and to stop "injecting race into the conversation" and finally to "get your own blog". All of a sudden the "content of my comments and posts" were just intolerable, "end of story". As the lone African American, and the lone female with front page privileges, I felt I was being a voice for the voiceless, bringing diversity and a point of view that is often suppressed to the discussion. In the end I was treated like a subordinate and not an equal.  But I digress.

I find it troubling President Obama cites the trials and tribulations of the late civil rights activist Dr. Dorothy I. Height when she was refused admittance to Barnard College because they already had their quota of African American women, then over looks highly qualified Judge Diane Woods in favor of the less qualified Solicitor General Elana Kagen.

Look at the late singer, actress and activist, Lena Horne, who was blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood because of her far left political activism. Lena Horne reportedly descended from the John C. Calhoun family. We don't even have to ask how that happened do we?

because the slaves were the legal property of their owners, it was not unusual for enslaved black women to be raped by their owners, members of their owner's families, or their owner's friends. Children who resulted from such rapes were slaves as well because they took the status of their mothers

The first piece of real legislation Barack Obama signed as the 44th President of the United States helps ensure that workers discriminated on the basis of gender have a fair chance to sue their employers.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is named after a woman who was paid less than her male co-workers at an Alabama tire factory. Ledbetter did not set out to be an activist; she did not even involve herself in politics much. But after the Supreme Court ruled against her, she decided it was time to start.

Salon.com raises some serious questions about Elana Kagens hiring practices as Dean of the Harvard Law School

The first woman Dean of Harvard Law School had presided over an unprecedented expansion of the faculty -- growing it by almost a half. She had hired 32 tenured and tenure-track academic faculty members (non-clinical, non-practice). But when we sat down to review the actual record, we were frankly shocked. Not only were there shockingly few people of color, there were very few women. Where were the people of color? Where were the women? Of these 32 tenured and tenure-track academic hires, only one was a minority. Of these 32, only seven were women. All this in the 21st Century.

President Obama says Elana Kagen is a "trail blazing leader"

"She's a trailblazing leader," Obama said. "The first woman to serve as dean of Harvard Law School and one of its most successful and beloved deans in its history. And she is a superb solicitor general, our nation's chief lawyer, representing the American people's interests before the Supreme Court. The first woman in that position as well."

President Obama stood up for Elana Kagen and Lilly Ledbetter Lilly Ledbetter. He should also stand up for Judge Diane Woods and African American women everywhere.

Ain't we a woman? We voted for you too. Don't we have the right to have our voices heard? I thought since democrats won two elections things were going CHANGE? I thought we'd had ENOUGH? I thought we weren't the red states or the blue states, but the United States of America, with liberty and justice for all, not some.