Merrick Garland Gets Emotional During Senate Confirmation When Talking About Race, and I Owe Him an Apology

 

Photo: AL DRAGO (Getty Images)

I owe Merrick Garland an apology. When it was announced that Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court (See Mitch McConnell as to why that didn’t happen) would now be President Biden’s pick for attorney general, I said some pretty harsh things about Garland.

I called him as special as a pair of all-white socks from Marshalls. I called him the Honda Civic of choices for this position and then named five Black folks that would’ve been a better pick to become America’s top cop.

The problem for me was as a judge, Garland has a soft stance on civil rights cases. Not that he doesn’t understand or tend to side with the victims of injustices that are clearly discriminatory; he just doesn’t have enough experience in the matter, or at least hadn’t ruled in enough cases to form a complete picture. The word on Garland was that he was “fair but moderate” in the civil rights cases that he’d seen thus far.

But remember back to the yesteryear of 2020 when America was on fire. Think back to the social unrest and the protests and the number of fires that raged that wouldn’t be put out. Biden ran on the promise of making all of this right and when it came to proposing an attorney general who would help shape laws that might end or at least curb police violence against people of color, he ignored Alabama Senator Doug Jones, the man who brought the Klansmen responsible for planting a bomb in an Alabama church that killed four girls to justice. He also ignored former civil rights lawyer Deval Patrick, who’d served as the governor of Massachusetts and just happens to be the same color as those getting beaten and killed by police for Garland.

In short, Garland as attorney general was a fuck you to Senate Minority Loser McConnell, who refused to hold Garland’s confirmation hearing after then-President Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court. The petty in me loved this; the hotep in me didn’t.

Then Monday came the way that Mondays always do and Garland got choked up and all of sudden my hardness for ol’ “Milquetoast Merrick” started to fade and well, I’m still not all aboard the S.S. Garland but I’m warming up to it.

It happened during New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s questioning (because of course it did) and well, just watch it for yourself:

Sen. Cory Booker elicits this emotional response from Merrick Garland, who talks about his grandparents coming to America to flee anti-semitism.

"I feel an obligation to the country to pay back and this is the highest best use of my own set of skills to pay back." pic.twitter.com/CrRr9xcr8O

— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) February 22, 2021

OK, I’m a father now and as such, I’m a sucker for someone getting in their feelings. But it wasn’t just that Garland got all up in his feels; it was also his answer on the disparities of race and incarceration.

.@SenBooker: "Does our justice system treat people equally in this country at this point."

Attorney General Nominee Merrick Garland: "Sadly, and it's plain to me, that it does not."

Full video here: https://t.co/7fkef7A3b2 pic.twitter.com/hXzwBt2HdQ

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 22, 2021

And look at this master class on systemic racism Garland gave to racistly obtuse Republican Sen. John Neely Kennedy (La.):

"I think it is plain to me that there is discrimination and widespread disparate treatment of communities of color and other ethnic minorities in this country," Judge Garland says when asked to define systemic racism. https://t.co/3fMfVDBGsJ pic.twitter.com/I3fQefLDw6

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 22, 2021

While I’m not completely ready to believe that Garland’s going to head to the Justice Department and dawn a kente cloth cap and drill down on why “Lazy Smurf” was always considered the Black smurf, let’s just say that I owe Garland an apology as he’s not a pack of white socks at Marshalls. He’s clearly a bag of white socks with stripes at the top; he’s a Honda Civic with a spoiler kit.