Why am I so bothered by Ketanji Brown Jackson on Broadway?

With fear for accountability, I dissent.

I’m feeling very tentative about the news right now. I’ve never been able to stand hearing Trump speak for more than 45 seconds at a time, so I find myself yet again fast-forwarding or cutting off Up First with upsetting regularity. Media outlets are telling me to celebrate the acquittal of a man who choked a homeless Black man to death on a subway, while at the same time telling me that a “murder as an act of terrorism” charge makes sense for Luigi Mangione. ABC is donating $15 million to Trump’s presidential library because George Stephanopoulos said that Trump was found liable for rape, rather than for sexual abuse. Things are simply not making sense to me at this time.

So, my threadbare brain simply didn’t have the strength to comprehend the sentence I’m about to type: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson performed in a Broadway musical this past weekend.

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I’m not exactly a theatre kid. I’m a former theatre kid. I’m theatre kid-adjacent. I can’t quite say that I’m in it but not of it; it might actually be the other way round. I don’t really go to the theatre, I don’t listen to new Original Cast Recordings, and I don’t watch the Tonys. But me and like 12 other people are die-hard Smash fans, I can identify the Drama Desk Award winner in an ensemble film with 93% accuracy, and—most egregiously in a post-Obama world—I have a line from Hamilton tattooed on my body. (No regerts, idc, '“tomorrow there’ll be more of us” resonates to this day!) So I know these people. I know the people on-stage, and I know the people in the audience with their self-congratulatory laughter and applause.

That clip above is pretty cringe, but I don’t think that’s what has made me respond so viscerally to this situation. I generally like and appreciate earnestness. I’m called a dork, a nerd, and a geek pretty regularly. I get the vibes.

But something about this appearance is fucking annoying and even upsetting. Like, I’m being expected to relate to, empathize with, and yasss queen along to one of the most powerful people in the country as she cosplays fulfilling her Broadway dream? She is play-acting at acting in a play. It feels like Marie Antoinette cosplaying at being a peasant. It’s a parody of a parody.

“Getting a lot of Hamilton vibes from this” — woman who has only seen Hamilton

And let's sit with the power bit for a minute, because I see with Ketanji Brown Jackson a similar dynamic to Kamala Harris, or even Beyoncé. These are three exceptionally powerful Black women, whose power, we’re told, is a collective win worthy of celebration. We as Black women are encouraged to see ourselves in these Black women, both in terms of aspiration—I could be like her—and solidarity—she is like me. Those two feelings often work in tandem to protect these powerful women from any meaningful accountability, especially when misogynoir hangs over every public conversation about them like the sword of Damocles. We are meant to be thrilled by the awesome power of the office when Kamala Harris stands on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and calls for a ceasefire, but also to recognize the limits of her vice-presidential position when she doesn’t do more. Thrilled by the first Black woman to become a Supreme Court Justice, but not address her presence in a necrotic and corrupt institution that she spent her entire career qualifying to be a part of. We’re meant to connect with Justice Brown Jackson’s lack of power relative to the rest of the Supreme Court, rather than identify her wealth of power relative to the rest of us.

Based on that dynamic, and the nature of the comments on the videos I’ve seen, the defense against my complaints will include “let Black women have fun!” and “why is it okay when [someone I have never defended in my life] does it?” The same people who would defend Harris’s presidential campaign by saying that any criticisms of her are unfair because expectations of Black women are always unforgivably high. And I’m annoyed, because the only platforms I’ve seen saying anything negative about this appearance are fucking Fox News and The New York Post, both of whom are making their predictably queerphobic (about the musical) and racist (about the Justice) “points.” It is very frustrating to know my feelings will be lumped in with that insidious bigotry. But I feel there’s something important, and importantly amiss, going on here.

The thing is, I do want Black women to have fun! I think Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves empathy and admiration. And I also recognize that she is, by choice, a public figure, and part of an institution that has been and will be absolutely terrorizing people and communities that are very dear to me. She appeared in this queer retelling of Romeo and Juliet mere weeks after a pretty brutal SCOTUS hearing about transgender rights, where all signs pointed to a devastating ruling come summertime. There’s an argument to be made for the importance of supportive and affirming optics right now. I just don’t know if the optics should be coming from a Supreme Court Justice who’s about to watch her colleagues rule away trans people’s right to freedom from discrimination. I feel we need and deserve more.