By Megan J. Shen
With the recent confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, many public health issues are seemingly on the line, including the Affordable Care Act, women’s reproductive rights, and access to in vitro fertilization. But Coney Barrett’s lack of awareness of the rampant, systemic racism in the U.S. – an oversight that generally was left out of the flurry of media coverage around her confirmation – is symptomatic of an even more pervasive and dangerous public health threat.
Senator Cory Booker’s questioning of Judge Amy Coney Barrett during her Supreme Court Confirmation hearings revealed her apparent lack of awareness of systemic racism. Booker brought up Coney Barrett’s ruling on a workplace discrimination case.
“This employee claimed that he had been subjected to hostile work environment, and that the supervisor called him the N-word,” Booker said, “But you ruled that the employee had failed to make the case that he had been fired in retaliation for his complaints about race discrimination.”
This instance is one of the clearest demonstrations of the systemic racism prevalent in the U.S. due, in large part, to a lack of anti-racist training and education.
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