On a college campus recently rocked by a federal crackdown on its own diversity policies, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court — told an audience of students and community members last week that diversity still matters and can still be a force for good.
“Difference can actually be meaningful or be special; it can be memorable,” she told the crowd seated in the auditorium of the University of Virginia’s Old Cabell Hall last Thursday evening. “Difference doesn’t always have to be bad if you go into it with the idea of understanding who you are and what you are. In my case, it turned out to be good.”
Then-President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to the high court in 2022, and the U.S. Senate confirmed her that same year after the Senate Judiciary Committee initially deadlocked on her confirmation.
Jackson faced pushback from the right for her rulings against the first Trump administration when she served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, her refusal to define the word “woman” during her hearing and what President Donald Trump has described as her “soft on crime” approach to law.
The pushback at times has veered into attacks not on her legal acumen but on her race and gender.
The late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was gunned down on a college campus in Utah the week prior to Jackson’s visit to UVa, called Jackson a “diversity hire” just this past summer.
“She is only there because she’s a black woman,” he said of the jurist in a post on X on June 27.
UVa too has faced criticism over so-called diversity hires, as well as how much weight the university has placed on diversity of race, gender, religion and ideology in its admissions practices. University President Jim Ryan resigned in July under pressure from the Trump administration Department of Justice, which accused him of slow-walking and misrepresenting his efforts to dismantle diversity policies after he was directly ordered to do so by the White House and UVa’s governing Board of Visitors.
Speaking at UVa, Jackson said her confirmation hearing and her short tenure on the Supreme Court are far from the first times she has had her work challenged because it was assumed she had risen through the ranks not because of what she had done but because of who she was.
Reading excerpts from her 2024 memoir, “Lovely One,” and reflecting on her early career as a public defender, Jackson encouraged her audience to let their work shine brighter than their identity.
“Do your best work in every workplace opportunity that you have,” she said. “When I was coming through, I remember thinking, ‘How do I want these people to perceive me?’ And I decided that my professional brand was going to be a hard worker. I was the first person in and the last one to leave. And you can influence that.”
Despite being the first Black woman to ever sit on the high court, Jackson said she still sees herself as a privileged.
“I am inspired by gratitude, by understanding that I am so privileged to do the work that I get to do. There are so many people, in particular Black women throughout history, who didn’t have the opportunity,” she said.
Jackson ended the conversation — hosted by her Harvard University Law School roommate-turned-UVa law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson — recounting what U.S. Sen. Corey Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, told her during her confirmation hearing:
“You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
David Velazquez (919) 612-7026
david.velazquez@dailyprogress.com @velazqdave on X
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David Velazquez
Government & Politics Reporter
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