Last week, Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away from complications of cancer. She is well regarded and celebrated as a trailblazer in a conservative profession. From becoming the first female law professor at Rutgers Law or the first female law professor tenured at Columbia law, her academic and professional accolades cannot be diminished. She did her thing. She was a staunch advocate for gender equality and that was reflected in many of her judicial opinions and sound bites off of the bench. In summary, I respect her body of work and her perserverance.
Now that we got the fluffy stuff out of the way, we also need to recognize her legacy and view it in totality. A lot of people of color celebrated her and lionized her. I’ve even seen people refer to her as the “Notorious RBG”. I don’t blame these people, most of them don’t understand the law or the job of a Supreme Court justice. I’m not hire to vilify Ms. Ginsburg (she is from Brooklyn after all), but I want to offer a more complete picture of her career and who she was, so that people get a better understanding of who she was.
She is notorious all right, for the lack of black law clerks hired under.
In 13 years on the D.C. Circuit, and over 25 as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, she hired one, that’s right one black law clerk. These law clerks go on to have important and well-regarded careers. She had a lot of time to hire more, but did not. Even if you argue that her focus was women, why didn’t she hire more black women? She was asked about her Circuit Court hiring record during her SCOTUS confirmation and said: “if you confirm me for this job, my attractiveness to black candidates is going to improve.” One hire might be deemed an improvement, right? Justice Sotomayor probably has the most diverse hiring record on the current panel of justices, but it is important to note that even conservative members like Justice Kavanaugh have been known to hire black law clerks. Don’t ask me if those are skinfolk or kinfolk, I don’t know. But I do know that he also goes to black law school groups to urge them to apply to clerkships…
She famously dissed Kaepernick.
When Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel in protest of police brutality, the reactions were mixed. Some called it disrespect, others called it bold. What did RBG say? “I think it’s dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.” She later apologized after she received some backlash, but that moment was a rare glimpse into her more conservative side.
She joined more conservative opinions than you know of.
RBG is known for writing some key opinions during her tenure at SCOTUS (too many to name here). A lot of her judicial activism was centered on gender rights, which makes sense considering the uphill battle she fought to dominate law school and get equal pay and equal employment access in the 1960s. However, we still need to view her career in totality. As a Circuit Court judge, she voted with two conservatives Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia, more than anyone else during her time there. She also joined conservative opinions at the SCOTUS level. Such as cases limiting a criminal defendant’s rights with respect to supervised release, reversed the convictions of some Bridgegate defendants and sided with the Trump administration’s efforts to speed up deportations of asylum seekers. These are a few examples, but it is important to view her record in totality.
We don’t have to agree as people, we don’t have to agree as a nation, but we should view our living and departed legends in totality independent of narratives created that skew them in either direction. As people of color, it is important to pick our hereos and shereos wisely. Black women may have benefited from Justice Ginsburg’s efforts and they should appreciate that. However, I would stop short of lionizing her without considering her full career and record. In the information age, we should do more than post RIP for likes without 10 minutes of research into a person’s life.
Drop a comment and let us know your thoughts.
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I feel you. I don’t know too much about her history in the area of race relations at all honestly. So I can’t speak on that too much. I know she 1 black clerk thing and I know she wrote a helluva dissent in the voting rights case. In 87yrs of life, I hate to confine her legacy solely to either but i agree that black ppl should be more critical.
Definitely hear you, not trying to tarnish her legacy, but merely looking to shed light on lesser known facts.
As far as joining conservative opinions. A lot of SCOTUS opinions are about very narrow legal issues that don’t necessarily have a liberal/conservative bend unless you look at who is advocating for what. I like to think that lost Justices do their best to look past that (I know that most don’t). But I applaud her ability to that when she could.