American Math: Black + Female = Unqualified

After Justice Breyer announced his resignation last week and President Biden confirmed he planned to keep his campaign promise of nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, I knew I’d need to brace myself for the next couple of weeks. Call it stacking up ample frustration in advance of what is going to be an emotionally trying process. Battening down my mental, physical, and emotional hatches. Slamming, then locking the steel door to my internal storm shelter. I could definitely go on but am choosing to spare y’all any additional rhetorical flourish….

One helluva storm’s brewing, and we’re about to experience intense thundershowers of racism and sexism for a solid couple of months. Get ready for power outages. Flash floods. Devastating wind. Y’all might recall a similar storm that raged for weeks on end during the 2020 election after President Biden announced his pick for Vice President: a category five hurricane of racist, sexist bullshit that spread from sea to shining sea, leaving no community untouched.

It’s a tale as old as time in this country. When white and male are the default (yet invisible) standards, no one deviating from those unspoken criteria can ever hope to measure up, no matter how objectively qualified. And if someone different does manage to get into a position of power, the collective snap judgment is that it…