Judge Jackson highlights US race issues in victory speech
3 Min Read
The newly appointed judge has highlighted the struggles and progress of Black Americans.
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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson joined by the US President and Vice Presidednt during her celebration speech (AP)
Yesterday, the Senate confirmed President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, paving the door for her to become the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
During her celebratory speech on the south lawn of the White House, the newly appointed judge spoke of the trials and tribulations of Black Americans during her lifetime and noted that her family took one generation to move from "segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States."
Read more: Black History Month: Black oppression in the United States
Jackson said her grandparents had been sent to segregated schools and has "now achieved something far beyond anything my grandparents could have possibly ever imagined."
She quoted the words of Maya Angelou saying, "I am the dream and the hope of the slave."
Despite the dream coming true, Jackson said that she has been lucky on her path to the high court. Although her arrival breaks one of the remaining racial barriers in American democracy, many Black Americans still struggle to surmount systemic blocks.
A former Ohio Senator, Nina Turner, called Jackson's speech "magnificent", adding that it is vitally important that Blacks in the nation remind this nation where they have come from.
“It is vitally important that we, as Black people, continue to remind this nation from whence we came,” she said. “The pain that it took to get to a ‘Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’ could not be understated.”
Read more: Black History Month: black oppression at the hands of the Europeans
According to Turner, “Not only should the entire Black community be proud, the entire country should be proud because this has certainly been a long time coming,” she said. “And from this victory, we certainly have an opportunity to continue to build and create more victories. We’re not done yet.”
After Justice Stephen Breyer retires this summer, Jackson will be sworn in.
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden stated that if elected, he will nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.
A quarrel was ongoing between the Democrats and the Republicans about Jackson's nomination, as GOP members attacked Jackson during her confirmation hearings, attempting to depict her as weak on crime and, in a particularly inflammatory line of attack, overly soft in sentencing child pornography cases. The claims were met with a vehement denial from Jackson and the Democrats.
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