Please Stop Saying the Appointment of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Doesn’t Matter

Also stop saying that voting doesn’t matter.

image via Wikimedia

Is it that we can’t see the forest for the trees?

Everywhere I look, there’s a Black person saying that the appointment of a Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States doesn’t matter. Reasons include she’s one of only three liberals on the court, so her voice won’t matter. She’s nothing more than a Black face. Or, she’s just a token. Putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court is nothing but symbolic, they say, and nothing will change for Black people in America just because Jackson is on the Supreme Court. According to them, it’s the same way that nothing changed with Barack Obama being elected President of the United States or Kamala Harris becoming Vice President.

According to people who think this way, voting also doesn’t matter. Again, it doesn’t change anything for the racial and economic challenges Black people face in America. They say we can’t vote our way out of our problems, and we’ve been sold this lie for decades.

Only, this is not true.

First of all, representation matters.