When looking at it that way it’s actually a pretty impressive accomplishment. Yes it’s not exactly in-line with the population but that would be damn near impossible to do given the various demographics across the entire US.
Being queer doesn’t make you worse at law. Preexisting discrimination and discriminatory forces in law world is causing that number to be so much lower than the wider population and the best way to forcefully address that is to increase representation and visibility in that population.
These are elite positions. Everyone on the short lists, queer or not, is qualified for the job. The choices made at that point are not for picking the “best” candidate because there is no “best” candidate. There’s different choices. Different viewpoints. Different backgrounds. Different politics.
And I think the Biden administration is making good choices as far as appointments go. Intentional choices. Choices meant to make a culture shift that needs to happen.
I’m 100% sure you’re right. My point wasn’t meant to discredit their candidacy, and I’m sorry if that’s how it read.
I’m simply saying he’s pulling from a pool that is distributed differently than the national distribution, and therefore the pool distribution should be used to reference his selection distribution. It was a comment on statistics, not capabilities.
To be clear, I object to both comparisons-- both to the population-wide demographics and the law-wide one – though I do clearly think it’s a conversation worth having.
Because it fundamentally misunderstands what the purpose of representation is. Representation is not an ends on itself, so “matching” population demographics is useless for anything other than identifying likely discrimination. It’s not a numbers game. There’s no “but hey, look how close we truly are to achieving good representation!” It’s not that, because it’s still remarkable that this many queer people have been put into power. They’re the exception to prove the rule that the field is still inherently hostile to them.
The goal isn’t “equal” or “proportional” representation or anything like that. The goal is elimination of the systemic discrimination. The goal is ensuring that brilliant new minds aren’t being filtered out for being different from the social norms. This is back to the old RGB quote.
Oh, I totally agree. It should be much higher if the better candidates are also members of the community. The point of brining statistics into the conversation was to get an idea of his inclusion in relation to the selection group, not that he should be trying to meet some quota.
I think there should be more than a representative number of federal judges who are queer. Queer people are the most at risk from the law, so they should have the biggest say in the law. Same for racial minorities, women, and disabled people.
Glad it’s 11, wish it was more.
Same. But that’s out of 200 total so 5.5%. As of 2022 a poll concluded that approximately 7.1% of adult Americans identified as LGBT (source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx)
When looking at it that way it’s actually a pretty impressive accomplishment. Yes it’s not exactly in-line with the population but that would be damn near impossible to do given the various demographics across the entire US.
It shouldn’t be compared to national statistics, but the distribution of the source pool.
He’s seated well above the percent of LGBTQ+ attorneys available for him to choose from.
https://www.2civility.org/aba-profile-of-the-legal-profession-heres-what-the-legal-profession-looks-like-in-2022/
Being queer doesn’t make you worse at law. Preexisting discrimination and discriminatory forces in law world is causing that number to be so much lower than the wider population and the best way to forcefully address that is to increase representation and visibility in that population.
These are elite positions. Everyone on the short lists, queer or not, is qualified for the job. The choices made at that point are not for picking the “best” candidate because there is no “best” candidate. There’s different choices. Different viewpoints. Different backgrounds. Different politics.
And I think the Biden administration is making good choices as far as appointments go. Intentional choices. Choices meant to make a culture shift that needs to happen.
I’m 100% sure you’re right. My point wasn’t meant to discredit their candidacy, and I’m sorry if that’s how it read.
I’m simply saying he’s pulling from a pool that is distributed differently than the national distribution, and therefore the pool distribution should be used to reference his selection distribution. It was a comment on statistics, not capabilities.
To be clear, I object to both comparisons-- both to the population-wide demographics and the law-wide one – though I do clearly think it’s a conversation worth having.
Because it fundamentally misunderstands what the purpose of representation is. Representation is not an ends on itself, so “matching” population demographics is useless for anything other than identifying likely discrimination. It’s not a numbers game. There’s no “but hey, look how close we truly are to achieving good representation!” It’s not that, because it’s still remarkable that this many queer people have been put into power. They’re the exception to prove the rule that the field is still inherently hostile to them.
The goal isn’t “equal” or “proportional” representation or anything like that. The goal is elimination of the systemic discrimination. The goal is ensuring that brilliant new minds aren’t being filtered out for being different from the social norms. This is back to the old RGB quote.
Oh, I totally agree. It should be much higher if the better candidates are also members of the community. The point of brining statistics into the conversation was to get an idea of his inclusion in relation to the selection group, not that he should be trying to meet some quota.
I think there should be more than a representative number of federal judges who are queer. Queer people are the most at risk from the law, so they should have the biggest say in the law. Same for racial minorities, women, and disabled people.
Yes. But the overall percentage isn’t there I’m sure. Patience I know. 6 months left to course correct the previous “regime”