A woman who'd dare use adopted black kids as her personal smokescreen
Last month, Senator Cory Booker grilled Amy Coney Barrett about a 2019 case in which she voted to uphold the dismissal of a workplace discrimination lawsuit filed by Terry Smith, a Black Illinois Department of Transportation employee. In the lawsuit, Smith claimed his supervisor, Lloyd Colbert, called him a Nigger, which, 99.9% of the time constitute a hostile work environment.
Barrett, whose two adopted Black children can be seen in the photo to the right, had the audacity to rule that it was not enough for Terry Smith to prove that the word Nigger was used. He also had to prove that being called a Nigger negatively impacted his work performance. Was that fact not already obvious? How is one's performance not negatively impacted knowing his boss thinks of him as a Nigger and rather than coming to his defense, his employer tries to sweep it under the rug? Barrett's position seems as out of touch with reality as her obliviousness to the fact that in many of their photo ops, the two black sheeps of the family are not blended in with her biological kids but positioned off to the side.
I gather that in Amy Barrett’s world, peak performance is to be expected even when your supervisor is hovering over your shoulders, cracking a whip, and spewing such racist vitriol as "Nigger," "Coon," "Jigaboo," "Porch monkey," "Sambo," or "Tar baby". Inversely, one can only imagine how it would have gone down if the tables were turned and a black supervisor had referred to a white employee as, “Whitey,” “Honky,” “Ofay,” “Snow Flake,” or “Eskimo Pie.”
I am dually compelled to wonder what would happen if Little Haitian JP (Barrett’s adopted black son) came home from school one day and complained that little Sally Sue (a privileged white kid) called him a Nigger, and there were absolutely no punitive measures or corrective actions taken by school officials. Instead, the blame was shifted, diminished, ignored; leaving the impression that the black kid must have had it coming.
Would this white colonizer go batshit crazy or opine that since Little Haitian JP’s school performance was not negatively impacted, there was no harm or foul? In my mind's eye, there is little doubt, she’d probably do the latter given what we already know about her supremist views which seem to dictate that blacks—her adopted son included—should take kindly to being called a Nigger by anyone baring white skin.
Barrett later implied that Smith’s rocky relationship predated his run-in with Colbert, as if the flaws of Lloyd Colbert did not reflect the faults of the company. Or for that matter, the likelihood of a preexisting condition of systemic racism throughout the Illinois Department of Transportation. Instead, it was easier to deem Smith culpable despite probabilities he were not the only culprit in the toxic relationship or even its instigator. Strangely, there also was no mention of the the Illinois Department of Transportation's faulty vetting process. That is to say, its hiring of a racist (Colbert).
The world watched as Barrett stuck her foot in her mouth declaring that Smith had a part to play in the psychological stress he claimed because he was a poor-performing employee. So I’m guessing the supreme court justice wannabe is insinuating that if a black man is a sub-par employee, he deserves and/or must have provoked being called a Nigger. This crazed notion seems on par with the longstanding digs, tags, code words and racial stereotypes—shiftless, lazy, indolent, and good-for-nothing—which privileged, xenophobic white people have habitually and disingenuously assigned to blacks.
Does this all sound familiar; like déjà vu? Not only is Amy Coney Barrett an Antony Scala mentee but also a xenophobic version of Donald Trump who thinks blacks should go back to the shithole countries from which they came! Profoundly, anyone who denies that a confirming vote for Amy Barrett is equivalent to appointing Justice Donald J. Trump to the bench, is severely out of touch with reality.
One thing for certain, Barrett makes another of Trump’s past appointees, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, look like Mahatma Ghandi. At least Kavanaugh had the sense and decency to recognize just how the mere utterance of Nigger surpasses everything else. In a 2013 ruling, Kavanaugh declared that being called the N-word by a supervisor constituted a racially hostile work environment. Too, he rightfully recognized that the word Nigger is the sum total of all the bitter years of insult and a pure abomination to blacks in America.
Alas, Brett Kavanaugh does not have two little black Haitian children running around the house. But I imagine that if he did, they would not be viewed as different or treated as best kept secrets, or outcasts; to be written off until their identified purpose had been served.
Sadly, this so-called scholarly academia who runs around quoting laws and statutes like profit John the Baptist quotes biblical scriptures; this pretentious do-gooder who parades her adopted black kids around as props; this faker who tries haphazardly to distance herself with her twofaced admonishments about the N-word being “an egregious racial epithet,” is who the GOP is aspiring to place on the supreme court.
Among all else, Amy Coney Barrett symbolizes the loopholes white America consistently and conveniently finds to ensnare blacks while at the same time, vindicating and exalting themselves.
Truth is, blacks no more believe Barrett would dare subordinate her xenophobic beliefs to federal anti-discrimination laws than they believed her adoption of two, black, Haitian-born children was altruistic, sincere, or genuine. Likely, it was all a smokescreen from the get-go; a part of some longstanding scheme for ascending to the highest bench in the land.
What a sick and twisted ideology to be held; that a close proximity to blackness—disregarding of youth, innocence, and genuine need for parental guidance—would immunize Amy Coney Barret from harboring attitudes that are rooted in racism or committing racist acts. I find it mindboggling, the need to surround herself with two black kids given her own true colors which she has already shown.