Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as first Black female high court justice

> How shitty would you feel if you've worked your whole life at a very high level, and then the president announces that you're chosen not because you're the best of the candidates, but because you're a black candidate.

This is an interesting point. One of the things that's been pointed out to me by women in my life is the psychological toll of repeatedly being in situations where you feel like you've been discriminated against but there's just enough ambiguity that you're not comfortable speaking up about it. E.g. being passed up for promotion in favor of someone who isn't blatantly less qualified, but is less qualified nonetheless, or being unsure if someone speaks to everyone in a condescending tone or just to women.

The case of the justice seems like the inverse of that. Do publicly advertised affirmative action or DEI programs have the side effect of causing qualified people to second guess whether their success was earned?

I do think there's a lot of value in such programs (that most likely outweighs the negatives, to the extent that they even exist), but I haven't heard anyone talking about whether such effects exist and if so how to handle them. Maybe it's not a factor at all, I certainly am not in a position to say.

I think that she is pretty aware of reality on which she is among best candidates. And the group of best candidates is larger then a single one person.

Yet also, precious candidates were less qualified but highly political, so it is not like anyone would think the selection is all about qualification.

> So fix the education system.

And, what, wait 50 more years before the education system, fixed by your magic wand, produces a judge that has never been done any favors, implicit or explicit, according to their race and gender?

The difference in outcome with this strategy is made obvious by contrasting Clarence Thomas with Ketanji Jackson. I agree with others in this thread that real reform must be via improving K-12 education for all students.

I think a great start would be for all schools to receive the same $ per student. There are still infinite questions about attracting excellent teachers, additional ways to ensure that rural schools can compete with urban schools, and that "inner-city" schools get good staff. Obviously there are tons and tons of pitfalls for a comprehensive education improvement effort, but at least starting with sharing funding among all students equally seems like it would have a large effect.

I do think each student should be educated to their individual capacity, although social mixing can also help. There are infinite philosophical and practical discussion that can be had about American education. Perhaps truly accepting or rejecting that its purpose is to do a lot of the child-raising could yield interesting system proposals. Kids spend more waking hours with teachers than they do with parents.

Bill Gates allegorically told Saudi Arabia[0] when asked whether the country could realistically become "one of the world's most competitive economies.":

> "I said, 'Well, if you're not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you're not going to get too close to the top,'" said Bill Gates.

I wonder how much of our talent/population we are completely failing to utilize. Even without the extreme degree of sexism that Saudi Arabia suffers, I bet we're wasting far, far more than 50% of the USA's talent and "human resource" capacity.

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”[1] I am sure that a massive number of USA's current Einsteins are stuck working at restaurants, amazon warehouse/fulfillment, supermarkets, and gas stations. These are not just black people, but indeed anyone not born into privilege, and also many who fell out of their privilege and cannot get back to work near their real potential economic value.

We may not be able to help the mathematical geniuses who could have been who are now serving tables at a restaurant, but as a society we can extract more value from their children by educating everyone much better than we do.

I personally believe there's little that's more "pro-business" than supplying a massive labor pool of top talent at deep, deep subsidies. It amazes me that the largest corporate tycoons don't wildly clamor for massive improvements in education.

From a national security standpoint, if we captured more value of 3x or 10x as many moderately competent and completely brilliant minds, no other country would ever be able to compete with us economically.

The only loss would be to _undistinguished_ authoritarians, who might lose power if the populace was well-educated. But effective authoritarians certainly could still thrive. This should be a widely supported strategic policy by people of most political ideologies.

0: https://www.salon.com/2007/01/29/gates_22/

1: Steven Jay Gould in The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

I think you would be surprised by the treatment endured by even the most well-off people of color. I know a guy who's very financially successful, lives in an expensive neighborhood, drives a luxury car, wears expensive "professional" clothes, and so on. He still talks about repeatedly getting pulled over either for a clearly made up reason (e.g tail light being out when it's clearly not) or for no stated reason at all.

Contrast to the previous president, whose appointments were all drawn from the Federalist Society. Were they the most qualified candidates? We won't know because the pool of candidates was restricted to a certain subset of the population.