On NBC News, Charles Coleman Jr. calls out Republicans' sexist and racist questioning in Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings
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From the March 23, 2022, edition of NBC News Now
CHARLES COLEMAN JR. (NBC NEWS LEGAL ANALYST): In a larger context, however, it bears — it's worth noting that a lot of the characterization around her empathetic, compassionate nature — those have an underpinning of sexism. And I think that that's not something that people would automatically pick up. That is an attempt to sort of lean in on the judge as a woman, as someone who generally speaking is going to be viewed as more sympathetic, soft on crime, things of that nature. And she handled it beautifully in giving a justification as to why she used her discretion in the manner that judges are allowed to at the times that she did.
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And there have been many, many [examples] in terms of the way that language has been used — there would not have been as much a conversation about critical race theory even if Judge Brown Jackson was viewed to be a liberal judge but was not a black woman. There would not have been the same emphasis on critical race theory, for example, that we've seen from Hawley, that we've seen from Ted Cruz and others. And so, there have been a number of dog whistles that have been employed by senators asking questions because quite frankly, she has been so standout and excellent in terms of her delivery and in terms of her responses that there hasn't been very much smoke — or fire, rather — around her record itself. And so people have felt the need to sort of grandstand politically around these other tangential issues by using that sort of language that has these underpinnings of sexism and racism in different cases.