Well, as could be expected, when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) got his chance to question U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearings this Tuesday, it didn’t go great. Cruz brought up critical race theory — that favored boogeyman of the Right which states, as summarized by Education Week, 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.” Nothing too complicated, right? Wrong, according to Republicans who have absolutely lost their collective mind over it. Cruz asked Jackson for her understanding of critical race theory, to which the judge replied, in part: “It doesn’t come up in my work as a judge. It’s never something that I’ve studied or relied on. And it wouldn’t be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson possesses so much more intelligence and integrity than Josh Hawley and the other Republican Senators engaged in the smear campaign against her.
I had hoped my colleagues in the other chamber could not debase themselves any further.
— Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) March 21, 2022
Jackson serves on the board of trustees for a Washington, D.C. educational institution called the Georgetown Day School, and Cruz subsequently brought up that school — complaining about a statement in which Jackson praised the “progressive” nature of the education that the school presented to students. Specifically, Cruz singled out a reference Jackson previously made to the school’s inclination towards “social justice.” Jackson replied as follows:
‘Georgetown Day School has a special history that I think is important to understand when you consider my service on that board. The school was founded in 1945 in Washington, D.C. at a time in which by law there was racial segregation in this community… Georgetown Day School is a private school that was created when three white families, Jewish families, got together with three Black families and said that despite the fact that the law requires us to separate, despite the fact that the law is set up to make sure that Black children are not treated the same as everyone else, we are going to form a private school so that our children can go to school together. The idea of equality, justice, is at the core of the Georgetown Day School mission.’
Check out Jackson’s comments below:
Cruz is making a fuss out of Judge Jackson endorsing social justice. He's kinda telling on himself here. pic.twitter.com/1LlADoDR2m
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 22, 2022
Cruz wasn’t done. He brought up a selection of specific books involved (whether through required or recommended reading) in curriculum at the Georgetown Day School — books that he complained promoted critical race theory to students. One of the issues that Republicans have with critical race theory is their argument that it broadly characterizes certain groups of people as racist. Jackson pointed out that she does “not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or though they are not valued or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors.” Jackson pointed out that members of the board of trustees don’t control curriculum at the Georgetown Day School. In other words — in line with other Republican Senators who spoke Tuesday — Cruz’s questioning constituted irrelevant grandstanding. Watch more of Cruz’s meltdown below:
