The White Choice

Charles Krauthammer of the *Washington Post* and David Brooks of the *New York Times* must have been mind-melding just after the nomination of John Roberts for the recently opened Supreme Court vacancy. They each make the same preposterous claim about Roberts’ ethnicity. Brooks (sorry we cannot link the article) writes,

President Bush consulted widely, moved beyond the tokenism of identity politics and selected a nominee based on substance, brains, careful judgment and good character.

The next day,
Charles Krauthammer
follows him:

And there were two kinds of history available to him — ethnic or ideological: nominating the first Hispanic, which is a history of sorts, or nominating a young judge who would move the court to the right for the next 25 years. President Bush eschewed the more superficial option and went for the real thing.

Each of these claims rests on the fallaciously dichotomous, however tacit, assumption that the choice Bush faced was one between qualified and male white or unqualified but “ethnic” or perhaps “someone with a racial identity”. In Brooks’ case, the very choice of a white man constitutes “moving beyond the tokenism of identity politics.” “Anglo-white” and “conservative catholic” do not for some reason constitute an identity for Brooks. In a similar fashion, Krauthammer does not wonder whether a non-white candidate could have “moved the court to the right”; the choice was for him, as it was for Brooks, between two exclusive categories of thing: a qualified white-male candidate, or a superficial or politically motivated choice of a non-white candidate. Perhaps before making such a ludicrous claim, Brooks and Krauthammer might establish, which they do not, that no non-white male was qualified for the job.

4 thoughts on “The White Choice”

  1. Isn’t Gonzalez supposedly as conservative as Roberts? Maybe just “superficially” consevative. What about the token black Neo-Con that is Condoleeza? Oh yeah, and of the current supreme court justices, how many were appointed by right-wingers? Seven? How many more right turns can the supreme court make before it completes a 360?

    Krauthammer’s article is just another veiled attempt at bashing “liberal” justice Sandra D. and her “independent” streak as a sodomy-loving baby eater.

    But he has Pulitzer and you don’t.

  2. Ah yes and many argued that slavery was correct also.
    Racism perpetuated by corrupt racist hidden by language that is designed to deceive.

  3. Bush can’t afford to nominate Gonzales, who would be publicly grilled about his methods of retaining (or shredding) information for the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame affair.

    And if Brooks and Krauthammer were fair, or even simply intelligent, they would not be the darlings of the right. My vocabulary is insufficient to describe them. Where’s Hunter Thompson when you need him?

  4. Where’s Hunter Thompson when you need him?

    Dead, sorry to say. Killed himself with a shotgun.

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