These reactions from the Right are as shocking as they are utterly unsurprising. Whether or not it has any immediate effect on the Supreme Court’s decisions: To a reactionary white patriarchal movement, a Black woman rising is always going to be an acute threat.
https://twitter.com/wajahatali/status/1506687261529853956
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the conservative reactions to Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court in my @GuardianUS column. They reveal a lot about the conservative psyche and the pervasive siege mentality on the Right:
https://twitter.com/gdnusopinion/status/1488836354708365313
We need to start by acknowledging how flat-out racist and sexist these reactions are - so revealing precisely because they are so immediate, so reflexive. Misogynoir is the best term to capture the core of what is happening here.
On top of that, these reactions reveal something else too: They are evidence of how impactful KBJ’s nomination is – and why it was important for Biden to openly state the intention of nominating a Black woman instead of opting for the non-committal “someone qualified” version.
Conservatives felt threatened by Biden’s announcement because they understood it symbolized the recognition that having white men dominate the powerful institutions of American life is a problem that needs to be rectified.
The Right saw Biden’s announcement as an indication of how powerful the forces of liberalism, “wokeism,” and multiculturalism – those radically “Un-American” ideas that are threatening “real” (read: white Christian patriarchal) America – have already become.
Nothing symbolized this threat to white dominance like Barack Obama’s presidency - an outrageous subversion of what reactionaries understand as America’s natural order, made worse by the fact that he managed to get re-elected with less than 40 percent of the white vote.
The Republican attempts to subvert democracy and erect one-party-rule systems on the state level are a direct reaction to this “threat.” Republicans are under no illusion about the lack of majority support for their preferred version of “real America.”
The fact that a reactionary majority will dominate the Supreme Court for a generation doesn’t do much to alleviate these fears. Conservatives realize that their vision for American society has come under pressure, and not just politically, but even more so culturally.
It is not just political power the Right seeks, but cultural domination and affirmation. And in the cultural sphere, the shift in power away from white conservatives has been more pronounced, leading to the recurring rightwing moral panics of recent years.
The freak-outs over #MeToo, “cancel culture,” “wokeism” – they are reactions to the fact that traditionally marginalized groups have indeed gained enough political and cultural influence to make their claims heard and demand a modicum of respect.
It has traditionally been the prerogative of a white male elite to determine what is and what is not acceptable in U.S. society. That prerogative has come under fire, and it’s not something the judiciary can fully restore.
Conservatives understood Biden’s announcement as evidence that the dreaded forces responsible for the general assault on white male rule keep ascending within America’s institutions. Whether or not it has any immediate effect on the Court’s decisions, that’s a threat.
Biden’s public pledge represented an affirmation of multiracial pluralism. That’s why it mattered – an acknowledgment that the traditional dominance of white men was never the result of meritocratic structures, but of a discriminatory system that needs to be dismantled.
A Black woman on the Court will help redefine what the American political, social, and cultural elite looks like – reshaping ideas in the nation’s collective imaginary about who gets to be at the top. As multiracial, pluralistic democracy is under assault, that matters a lot.
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