Letters submitted by BDN readers are verified by BDN Opinion Page staff. Send your letters to letters@bangordailynews.com
Recent letters and columns in the BDN have shared writers’ distress over President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court preference to nominate a woman of color. I believe these writers are overlooking an important fact. Our country spent nearly 200 years under a rotation of appointed Supreme Court justices who were always white and always men.
Any president prior to John F. Kennedy didn’t need to utter the inherent bias involved in selecting a nominee. That bias was already embedded into America’s DNA of racism and sexism. If Dwight Eisenhower, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, or Harry Truman, or Woodrow Wilson or any prior president had stated, “Well, it has to be a white man,” would that have ruffled America’s feathers?
How can America be honest about its past without recognizing that rectifying a history of injustice requires explicit and targeted measures?
Craig Kesselheim
Southwest Harbor