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Bridget Bergen: I'm Bridget Bergen, politics reporter for WNYC in for Melissa Harris-Perry, this is The Takeaway. Good to be here with you. On day one of her confirmation hearings, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson addressed her two daughters, Leila and Talia directly.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: Girls, I know it has not been easy as I've tried to navigate the challenges of juggling my career and motherhood. And I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right.

Bridget: For many people listening, especially working mothers, the moment hit close to home. Striking that balance can be hard. So many women struggle with having to choose a career over family or vice versa in their lifetimes. Later in the week, Judge Jackson said more about motherhood in response to a question from Senator Cory Booker about being a mom of two young women growing up in America today.

Judge Jackson: I know so many young women in this country, especially who have small kids who have these momentous events and have to make a choice.

Bridget: Now, this isn't the first time motherhood has been front and center during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Republicans invoked Justice Amy Coney Barrett's status as a working mother as additional evidence of her qualifications for the nation's highest court. Justice Barrett herself leaned into the role as working mom during her confirmation hearings.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett: As the President noted when he announced my nomination, I would be the first mother of school-aged children to serve on the court.

Bridget: But during this week's hearings, Republican senators have mostly brushed aside Judge Jackson's motherhood and tried to paint her as someone who’s lenient when sentencing people on child pornography charges. On Wednesday’s show, The Takeaway broke down those misleading attacks on Judge Jackson. Today, we're looking at the intersection of motherhood and politics in her confirmation process and analyzing how race factors into these conversations.

For more on this, we're joined by Irin Carmon, a senior correspondent at New York Magazine, and Nadia Brown, Professor of Government, chair of the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Program and affiliate in the African American Studies program at Georgetown University. Thank you both for joining us.

Irin Carmon: Thanks for having us.

Nadia Brown: Thank you for having me.

Bridget: Irin first, why talk about motherhood or someone's parental status during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing?

Irin: Well, let me just say that I'm joining you now in a day that I've been kept all night by my toddler, so this feels like a very acute question to me right now, after 12 hours of hearing coverage and so on. Look, I think that in the most charitable way, a hearing is an opportunity to introduce a nominee to the country. They've gone through all kinds of vetting, but this is the opportunity for the country to see who they are. There's often an effort to humanize them. Even male nominees, they've talked a little bit about their children as a way to burnish them as human beings. They haven't been defined by that, which is probably a big distinction.

In the case of Judge Jackson, she's historic in so many ways, the first Black woman, the first person who served as a public defender who would serve on the Supreme Court. Because she is a Black mother, and that is afraid at status in American society, it's come up again and again. Unfortunately, as you alluded to, in your introduction, she has had to deploy it as a shield against totally unsubstantiated charges that she's soft on child molesters. When she has been asked about this, by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, she has repeatedly said, “As a mother, as a mother,” but I think it's complicated.

The two other Democratic appointees on the US Supreme Court are both unmarried and do not have children. You could imagine a scenario as well in which that would be a different form of stigma to say, “Well, what's wrong with her?” and that is in fact something that they experienced. It's almost as if by invoking motherhood, she's reassuring them that she's following these normative standards, her loving husband, her beautiful daughters, struggling just like regular American women. The burden on her is to show that she's just like everyone wants a good woman to be.

Bridget: Nadia, what do you make of Judge Jackson speaking directly to her daughters during that opening statement?

Nadia: I thought it was really powerful. Something that really strikes a chord with working mothers, with Black mothers, mothers in general. There’s so much of what we do as mothers is for our children. Our identities, for better or worse transform when we have children. Myself, I'm a mother of three Black little girls, ages six, four, and two. I took them to the Supreme Court on Monday to witness history in the same way that a Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is showing her daughters that anything is possible in the United States and that having a Black woman Supreme Court Justice is possible. But it's a possibility if you have the support, if you have the upbringing, if you have the resources and opportunities that Judge KBJ has.

I want to hold up and affirm this moment because it is so important. It's powerful, and it's really magical. Like Senator Cory Booker, I am sitting in my joy. It's also important to note that there are doors in this country that are closed for Black women, that are closed for Black girls precisely because of racism, sexism, heteropatriarchy.

Bridget: Can you Nadia say a little bit more about how Black women are held to a different standard when it comes to motherhood and how different this conversation about motherhood has been during Judge Jackson's nomination process?

Nadia: Yes, so because of racialized stereotypes about Black women, particularly their reproduction and their reproductive role in the American political economy and [unintelligible 00:06:23]. Black women have been othered in ways and stereotyped in ways that other groups haven’t. The comparison to Amy Coney Barrett is so striking because this happened so shortly ago, that these things are so head spinning to think of how a Black woman can't leverage or weaponize motherhood in the same way that Amy Coney Barrett was able to.

For example, the Mammy stereotype is a stereotype that comes to us from slavery in the Antebellum period that showcases Black women as devoted to their white family. Black women who are domestics or caretakers are more concerned with the white families that they work for than on taking care of their own families. The Sapphire is an angry Black woman character, someone who is not a nurturing or loving kind woman, to her children, nor to her husband or a man that's in her life. Then the Jezebel is kind of a sexual businesswoman who goes from person to person, man to man, carefree and doesn't think about children, but rather her own sexual gratification. These are the stereotypes that have plagued Black motherhood since they were invented during enslavement.

We saw this really played out with Michelle Obama. Even someone who had all the respectability markers of being married to Barack Obama, having children with in wedlock, but she was cast as a Sapphire. This angry Black woman, how would she be as a mother? Is she nurturing? Is she caring? That is something that white women, quite frankly, don't have to deal with.

Bridget: Irin, I want to go back for a moment to how different this conversation was during Justice Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing and how motherhood was discussed there. Can you remind our listeners of the difference in that confirmation hearing?

Irin: In addition to all the stereotypes that were just laid out, it is hard to imagine how a Black woman with seven children would have been regarded differently from Amy Coney Barrett, who was treated as this sanctified Madonna figure. When I say weaponized, I mean in a very specific political and jurisprudential context because as you know, the Supreme Court is currently considering a case that could fully overturn Roe v. Wade, depending on how far Justices like Amy Coney Barrett decide to go.

One of the arguments made by the State of Mississippi to say that individuals no longer need abortion rights is that it is so easy to balance work and family now. Women no longer need access to reproductive freedom. They no longer need to choose whether to become a mother or when to become a mother because everything is so hunky-dory for women in the workforce. That was the implicit and the explicit argument made about Amy Coney Barrett. You could imagine a context in which a Black woman was regarded completely differently for having too many children, which is a stereotype. The welfare mother is a stereotype of course that's been deployed against Black women.

Instead, Amy Coney Barrett was, “Look at her, she's done it all. She's a wonderful upstanding Christian woman who has somehow managed to be a law professor and managed to be a judge and a justice.” It was actually quite explicit from Republicans on the committee how they talked about her as somebody who proved that individuals don't need access to at that point, it was abortion, reproductive control in general, including birth control is on the table. I think Judge Barrett's forthrightness about the challenges- -of it, I thought was a more honest and open accounting of what it is like.

Bridget: Nadia, Judge Jackson is, as we've seen throughout this week, such an accomplished professional. Can you talk just a little bit about how Black women at her level have to strike this balance between motherhood and life in the public eye?

Nadia: In my research on Black women political elites, they have been extremely candid when they talk to me about the challenges and some of the difficulties and the real ingenuity in which they parent. Again, I am a researcher of Black women political elites, particularly I focus on state legislators and candidates for local office, which is different than Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson but I do think there is a thread line here. Working mothers everywhere have to be creative about how they plan doing laundry or what's for dinner and the crockpot is a friend of many.

The other thing that Black women have shared is that there's been a lack of regard for them as political figures when they're with their children. A legislator told me that she was in Target shopping on like a Saturday afternoon and had her kids. There was an angry constituent or someone who wanted to pick a bone with something that she had done. She said, ''This is not the appropriate place. I'm in Target. I'm with my kid. This is not a time I want to talk about this.” The person followed her around Target and she ended up having to go into the bathroom so that this person couldn't follow her and her child into the stall to keep talking.

I share this story because the legislator that shared this with me said that this most likely would not have happened if she were white because this person gathered such a spectacle that she felt unsafe. Even in a public place like a Target that there was little help for her as she tried to shield her child and her as an elected official, that is really on off-duty shopping in Target but that wondered if there was such a respect for keeping children out of the political fray. Because Black children are stereotyped as older, as more mature, that don't really have a sense of childhood innocence, that all things were able to be on the table here, that this person could harass her in this very public way and no one came to her rescue.

She said she just sat there in the bathroom and cried. I still think about this. As we know that the boundaries of politics have changed, that people are more aggressive and the gentile or civilness of politics has changed, but it pulls me back to, would this have happened to a white woman who could leverage, ''Look my child was with me. This is not the appropriate time to talk about this. Can you come to my office? Here's my number or here's my staff person.” I think about how a judge like KGB, of would her children be subjected to this kind of vitriolic measures the same way that Black women have found themselves because of their politicized motherhood.

Bridget: In our final few moments, I want to ask you both what you think this confirmation hearing so far has revealed about the intersection of motherhood and politics today. How is this space changing? Irin?

Irin: It's hard to separate out anything from this confirmation hearing, from the frankly disgraceful circus that Republicans have put on. To me, what I take away from watching every hour, unfortunately, has been the unbelievable dignity and remarkable poise, thoughtfulness, fact-based eloquent answers from Judge Jackson. Whether she's speaking about her role as a mother or her role as a judge, she has hardly flinched in the face of unspeakable attacks. I think that when she talks about how important it is to her to model to young women, especially to young Black women, she's setting a standard that is as high as anyone could imagine, especially given how she's being treated.

Bridget: Nadia?

Nadia: Note that both political parties politicized motherhood and that there is a political advantage for mothers in ways that there aren't for unmarried women and women without children. I would echo the statement from Irin that watching Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has just been a bright spot in seeing how a woman as composed as she is will take that into the judiciary to sit on the Federal bench in this way. The role modeling effect is real, but it's also so much more tangible for Black women and girls who are looking at this moment and seeing a woman who looks for she has it all.

Vega: Irin Carmon, senior correspondent, New York Magazine and Nadia Brown, Professor of Government, chair of the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Program and affiliate in the African American Studies at Georgetown University. Thank you both for joining us on The Takeaway.

Nadia: Thank you.

Irin: Thank you.

Judge Jackson: That you just have to understand that there are lots of responsibilities in the world and that you don't have to be a perfect mom, but if you do your best and you love your children, that things will turn out okay.

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