There is among female African American legal scholars and jurists an enormous pool of legal talent that has been nurtured and cultivated but which has gone largely untapped. Deliberately choosing to make a beeline for this deep bench of talent only makes sense.
It is kind of like what happened in baseball. Following the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal of 1918, baseball established a commissioner of baseball and appointed Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, an outspoken white supremacist, who decreed that African Americans would not be allowed play in the major leagues. He held office from 1920 to 1944. When he left, he was replaced in 1945 by Happy Chandler, senator from Kentucky, a Southern state, but who was amenable to the idea of allowing African American talent in baseball.
General Manager Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers looked over to the enormous reservoir of athletic talent in the old Negro Leagues of the segregated baseball era — Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, “Cool Papa” Bell — that was just sitting there. They were absolutely the equals — the stars were the superiors — of their counterparts in the American and National Major Leagues. Mr Rickey made a conscious decision to reach into this available pool of talent, and recruited young African American players starting with Jackie Robinson and quickly adding Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and others, and took the Dodgers from perennial losers who had never won a World Series and only one league title in the previous 20 years to perennial contenders who won multiple league championships and World Series. Was it racist of Branch Rickey to see a pool of untapped talent and focus his recruiting there?
In promising to select a qualified African American woman from among the many who have been too long neglected, Joe Biden did the political equivalent of what Branch Rickey did in baseball. He saw a rich pool of untapped talent and decided he would be the first to take advantage of it.
There is among female African American legal scholars and jurists an enormous pool of legal talent that has been nurtured and cultivated but which has gone largely untapped. Deliberately choosing to make a beeline for this deep bench of talent only makes sense.
It is kind of like what happened in baseball. Following the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal of 1918, baseball established a commissioner of baseball and appointed Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, an outspoken white supremacist, who decreed that African Americans would not be allowed play in the major leagues. He held office from 1920 to 1944. When he left, he was replaced in 1945 by Happy Chandler, senator from Kentucky, a Southern state, but who was amenable to the idea of allowing African American talent in baseball.
General Manager Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers looked over to the enormous reservoir of athletic talent in the old Negro Leagues of the segregated baseball era — Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, “Cool Papa” Bell — that was just sitting there. They were absolutely the equals — the stars were the superiors — of their counterparts in the American and National Major Leagues. Mr Rickey made a conscious decision to reach into this available pool of talent, and recruited young African American players starting with Jackie Robinson and quickly adding Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and others, and took the Dodgers from perennial losers who had never won a World Series and only one league title in the previous 20 years to perennial contenders who won multiple league championships and World Series. Was it racist of Branch Rickey to see a pool of untapped talent and focus his recruiting there?
In promising to select a qualified African American woman from among the many who have been too long neglected, Joe Biden did the political equivalent of what Branch Rickey did in baseball. He saw a rich pool of untapped talent and decided he would be the first to take advantage of it.