Wait, I’m supposed to defend the Federal Bureau of Investigation now?

benfell

Gilead

Donald Trump

Coup attempt


Fig. 1. Department of Justice photograph of seized materials, reportedly partially redacted, via the Washington Post, August 31, 2022,[1] public domain.

White Christian nationalists are still[2] attacking the Federal Bureau of Investigation for searching Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property[3] despite the facts that the agency recovered classified records[4] and that more have been recovered since.[5]

Adam Goldman and Alan Feuer, “Republicans Step Up Attacks on F.B.I. as It Investigates Trump,” New York Times, December 29, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/us/politics/fbi-gop-attacks.html

Democrats

I have recently been inclined to attribute a rise in support for conservatives among Black people to Kanye West’s influence. Al Sharpton’s take is more interesting: He says that Black men feel left behind by the advancement of Black women:[6]

Some of [Donald] Trump’s appeal could be put down to misogyny. I get it on my radio show. “A Black woman appointed supreme court justice? a Black woman as vice-president? what about Black men?”[7]

I’m not going to go so far as to agree that this, in and of itself, is misogyny. Maybe it is; I haven’t listened to Sharpton’s show, haven’t heard what he’s heard. But I can see how a certain tokenization might look like checking off boxes rather than an actual search for talent when Black women are selected and not Black men.

I will never forget my formerly favorite professor’s lament that a search for a department chair yielded three white males for candidates. I think he made a mistake in attributing too much bias to race and not enough to other divisions, like class and gender. But whether he was right or he was wrong, he was reflecting a perception of discrimination and victimization among Black people that we ignore at our peril.

I endorsed Joe Biden’s promise to select a Black woman for the Supreme Court,[8] and he ultimately went beyond that promise, nominating a Black woman who was also a former public defender, Ketanji Brown Jackson,[9] who looks to me like an outstanding Justice, indeed, everything I hoped for.[10] There was one seat available on the Court and, in this case, I think he did awfully well in checking off multiple boxes.

The problem is that if you’re truly interested in diversity, you don’t just pick a Black woman and say, hey, that’s two boxes, race and gender. You need to pursue actual diversity, which means you pick women, men, and non-binary folks; you pick Black people, Asian people, Latin people, white people, and people of mixed race. Sometimes, you pick people who, indeed, check off two or more of these boxes. But sometimes, you don’t.

We can safely say that Donald Trump draws a certain amount of his support from folks who feel left behind by affirmative action and by this effort to check off boxes. I don’t mean to defend that support: I understand that much of this is an attempt to redress historical and continuing discrimination, which I absolutely do not deny. But just as with my formerly favorite professor, we need to understand that some people will see it differently. And speaking for myself, I certainly don’t see any attempt whatsoever to address ageism, and that likely is a part of how I feel left behind.[11]

I think the accusation that Sharpton is pointing to is that Democrats have been in too big a rush to check off multiple boxes[12] and thus to be economical with representation in higher office. It ends up shortchanging both Black people and women, as one person representing subaltern groups may be selected where two or more could have been, as well as everyone else.

Ed Pilkington, “Al Sharpton warns Democratic leaders of waning Black electorate support,” Guardian, December 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/29/al-sharpton-democratic-leaders-waning-support-black-electorate

  1. [1]Devlin Barrett, “Justice Dept. says Trump team may have hidden, moved classified papers,” Washington Post, August 31, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/31/trump-documents-removed-storage-room/↩
  2. [2]Clyde Hughes, “Rep. Greene files articles of impeachment against Attorney General Garland,” United Press International, August 13, 2022, https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/08/13/-Marjorie-Taylor-Greene-articles-impeachment-Merrick-Garland-Attorney-General/4231660394406/; Julia Ioffe, “Defund… the F.B.I.?” Puck News, August 9, 2022, https://puck.news/defund-the-f-b-i/; Molly Jong-Fast, “The People Who Can’t Stop Making Excuses for Trump,” Atlantic, August 18, 2022, https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/wait-what/62fd7788da4cea0020f4345e/trump-fbi-search-rand-paul-espionage-act/↩
  3. [3]Adam Goldman and Alan Feuer, “Republicans Step Up Attacks on F.B.I. as It Investigates Trump,” New York Times, December 29, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/us/politics/fbi-gop-attacks.html↩
  4. [4]Devlin Barrett, “Mar-a-Lago classified papers held U.S. secrets about Iran and China,” Washington Post, October 21, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/21/trump-documents-mar-a-lago-iran-china/; Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey, “Agents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago seized 11 sets of classified documents, court filing shows,” Washington Post, August 12, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/12/trump-warrant-release/; Alex Leary, Aruna Viswanatha, and Sadie Gurman, “FBI Recovered Eleven Sets of Classified Documents in Trump Search, Inventory Shows,” Washington Post, August 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-recovered-eleven-sets-of-classified-documents-in-trump-search-inventory-shows-11660324501; Jan Wolfe, Alex Leary, and Sadie Gurman, “Mar-a-Lago Boxes Had More Than 700 Pages of Classified Papers, National Archives Letter Says,” Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/letter-to-trump-lawyer-highlights-national-archives-concern-over-sensitive-materials-before-mar-a-lago-search-11661271403↩
  5. [5]Jacqueline Alemany et al., “Items with classified markings found at Trump storage unit in Florida,” Washington Post, December 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/07/trump-tower-bedminster-records-search/↩
  6. [6]Ed Pilkington, “Al Sharpton warns Democratic leaders of waning Black electorate support,” Guardian, December 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/29/al-sharpton-democratic-leaders-waning-support-black-electorate↩
  7. [7]Al Sharpton, quoted in Ed Pilkington, “Al Sharpton warns Democratic leaders of waning Black electorate support,” Guardian, December 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/29/al-sharpton-democratic-leaders-waning-support-black-electorate↩
  8. [8]David Benfell, “Ilya Shapiro is wrong and yes, Joe Biden should nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court,” Not Housebroken, February 1, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/02/01/ilya-shapiro-is-wrong-and-yes-joe-biden-should-nominate-a-black-woman-to-the-supreme-court/↩
  9. [9]Irin Carmon, “The Other First: What it means to nominate a veteran public defender,” New York, February 25, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/ketanji-brown-jacksons-public-defender-experience.html↩
  10. [10]David Benfell, “Ilya Shapiro is wrong and yes, Joe Biden should nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court,” Not Housebroken, February 1, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/02/01/ilya-shapiro-is-wrong-and-yes-joe-biden-should-nominate-a-black-woman-to-the-supreme-court/↩
  11. [11]David Benfell, “A life worth living,” Not Housebroken, December 27, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/12/27/a-life-worth-living/↩
  12. [12]Ed Pilkington, “Al Sharpton warns Democratic leaders of waning Black electorate support,” Guardian, December 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/29/al-sharpton-democratic-leaders-waning-support-black-electorate↩

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