I’ve been pondering a recent comment from my friend and fellow commentator, Dr. Ricky Jones of the University of Louisville, about who is and isn’t considered a Black person in good standing.

But let’s come back to that.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement last week, and President Joe Biden said he would only consider appointing an African American woman to replace him.

Many Republicans scoffed at the idea of race and gender being the threshold qualifications for this appointment, with academic scholarship and legal experience rendered secondary. This, in turn, caused Democrats to claim Republicans are racist (doesn’t everything?).

One popular Democratic talking point is that 108 of 115 Supreme Court justices in our history have been White men. And they have a point. Government should reflect all of America, and public service should be attractive to our best and brightest.

Of course, there’s only one African American on the Supreme Court now, and Biden desperately tried to personally destroy him. As Senate Judiciary Committee chairman in 1991, Biden orchestrated what now-Justice Clarence Thomas called a “high-tech lynching” before voting against him.

If Biden had his way, the talking point would be 109 out of 115.

Biden’s disgraceful treatment of Thomas is but one example of then-Sen. Biden working hard to keep highly qualified women and people of color off the federal bench.

When then-President George W. Bush nominated several non-White men to the judiciary, including Priscilla Owen (woman), Janice Rogers Brown (African American woman) and Miguel Estrada (Hispanic man), Biden and other Senate Democrats couldn’t stomach the thought of their possible ascendance to the Supreme Court.

So they used the “Jim Crow” filibuster – that’s Biden’s recent description of the Senate procedure, not mine – to block their nominations. Even after the bipartisan “Gang of 14” broke the Senate logjam, Biden voted against confirming these qualified, diverse appointees. Brown did make it to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, prompting Biden to go on national television a few weeks later to threaten to filibuster the highly qualified African American woman if Bush moved her up to the Supreme Court!

Too often, when presented with a chance to make the federal judiciary look more like America, Biden used his power to stand in the way of racial diversity.

But why?

The answer, it seems, lies in the modern liberal philosophy of who is allowed to be considered a minority in good standing. Biden gave voice to this theory during his 2020 campaign when he told a radio talk show host: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, you ain’t Black.”

It’s as offensive now as it was then. But Biden is hardly the only liberal who subscribes to this thinking.

Which brings me back to Jones: “Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron … doesn’t count in the Black conversation any more than the likes of Clarence Thomas,” Jones wrote on the pages of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Cameron is the first individually elected Black statewide official in Kentucky history. And during his campaign he dealt with several racist attacks, from being dragged into court by White, out-of-state lawyers who ludicrously alleged that he wasn’t qualified (he clearly was, and a court ruled as such), to a White liberal newspaper cartoonist depicting him as carrying the robes of a Ku Klux Klansman.

But in the estimation of Biden and Jones, Cameron doesn’t “count” any more than Thomas, because neither meets their political standard for what constitutes a Black person in good standing.

Or, put in a way that would’ve made sense to people in the 18th and 19th centuries, they are of defective stock and should be discarded.

After 50 years in Washington, Biden finally found religion on bringing diversity to the federal judiciary. Republicans and Democrats alike can rejoice that an African American woman will ascend to the highest court, even if Biden did a tremendous disservice to his eventual nominee with his up-front qualifiers that, by the way, more than three-quarters of Americans disagree with, according to a recent ABC News poll.

You don’t have to love the political ideology of Biden’s eventual nominee (and I am sure conservatives won’t) to give her more respect than liberals give the average Black conservative.

My initial reaction upon hearing Breyer’s announcement was that perhaps Senate Republicans should vote against Biden’s pick to pay back intransigent Democrats who made a mockery of the confirmations of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

But after thinking about Biden’s career behavior and the corrosive idea that African Americans must strictly adhere to a liberal political ideology to be counted as Black person in good standing, I’m coming around to the idea that Senate Republicans may want to offer support for this new justice, showing a maturity that today’s Democrats can’t seem to muster when the tables are turned.

If Senate Republicans choose the high road, the message to Black Americans would be clear: we respect you and consider you to be an American in good standing, even as people like Biden, Jones and the progressive left lie in wait should you get out of line.

– Scott Jennings is a Republican adviser, CNN commentator and partner at RunSwitch Public Relations. He can be reached at Scott@RunSwitchPR.com or on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY.