The future is female, and President Biden is paving this future one promise at a time with his announcement that he will elect the first Black female Supreme Court justice. Women have been overlooked in society for far too long, and they deserve to be recognized. They’ve worked exceptionally hard over the last century to gain respect, a basic human decency that men have been denying them on the basis of sex. It’s time that women of color in politics make it to the big leagues.

Back in 2020, then-presidential candidate Biden made a pledge to elect a Black female Supreme Court justice if he was elected president. Nearly two years later, he’s making good on his promise. President Biden announced on Jan. 27, 2022, that he would elect the first Black female Supreme Court justice in light of Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement this coming July. What a breath of fresh air, a president finally keeping a promise that was made before they were elected.

Why, since its establishment in 1789, has the U.S Supreme Court been home to mostly men, the majority of whom have been white? That’s 115 justices. All but six have been white men, and only four have been women. Of these four women, Sonia Sotamayor is the first (and only) Latina justice to reside on the Court. It is completely unreasonable to only have one Latina justice, considering the various Latinx communities that deserve representation across the country. By giving a Black woman a seat on the Supreme Court, a new, pivotal perspective of racial equality could be achieved.

However, with every historic step forward into the future, there will always be the persistent tug of conservative GOP members holding us back. No surprise here, some Republican politicians viewed President Biden’s announcement as a stab in the back to the American people. Senator Ted Cruz argued that Biden’s choice to pick a Black female as the next SC justice is “insulting” and “rude” to the rest of the American population. The fact that representation for Black communities is even up for debate represents how low our country’s gotten. In 2019, Black people made up 12.8% of the population, making them the second largest minority population in the United States. Republican politicians who choose to criticize Biden’s move for a Black female justice will never have the honor and respect that some of the female justice nominees possess.

Republicans are bashing Biden for his contemporary views on female representation while in reality they’ve been supporting white women for many years without an issue. They applauded Trump when he nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court position to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is the country’s double standard. Why is it appalling to Republicans that a Black female is being appointed to the Supreme Court? It all comes down to the courage of GOP members to accept Biden’s monumental decision.

After much deliberation over Justice Breyer’s replacement, Biden has appointed D.C. Circuit Court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Jackson always had a hunger for justice in the legal system. When she was a child, she used to sit next to her father with coloring books while he studied law books. In high school, she was incredibly gifted at speech and debate, later attending a debate competition at Harvard University and immediately falling in love with the campus. Her family descended from slaves, and she is only the second generation in her family to graduate college. After she graduated in 1992 from Harvard University, she returned to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School and get her law degree. She clerked for Justice Breyer, whom she is replacing on the Supreme Court, from the years 1999-2000. Breyer was not only her employer, but an avid supporter of her objectives and believes that her background will set her apart as a justice.

“She sees things from different points of view, and she sees somebody else’s point of view and understands it,” Breyer said.

Jackson is outspoken, opinionated and brings knowledge of criminal law and sentencing legal policy to the Supreme Court. Her rulings as a district judge in D.C. include blocking the Trump administration’s attempts to fast-track deportation and stating in 2019 that Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel, had to obey a congressional subpoena on his testimony regarding Trump’s actions during the Russia investigation. Jackson isn’t afraid to kick our politicians off their ego-fueled pedestals because they have a Constitution to uphold, not their selfish needs. Should they be afraid of Ketanji Brown Jackson? Yes, they should.

Although this is a step in the positive direction, it’s 2022. Why did it take so long for a Black female Supreme Court justice to have the opportunity to take the bench? I have an answer: we’ve been passively letting racism take over our country. The sickest thing is that the men who are campaigning against allowing a Black female justice in the Court would probably applaud our president if he announced the nomination of a white female for the Supreme Court position. Like Biden said in a Jan. 27 press conference, “it’s long overdue in my view” for a Black female to have a seat on the Supreme Court.

All this said, there wouldn’t even be a debate if a man would be replacing Justice Breyer’s seat on the Supreme Court. It would barely scratch the surface of the tabloids, given the country’s favoritism of men taking higher power positions. Men are respected and trusted to make decisions that will impact our country, even though they’ve proved time and time again that our country needs some better leadership skills. But, now that a Black woman is announced to fill a white man’s seat on the Supreme Court, the world sits up straighter. It’s a new perspective that the world is unfamiliar with, and it stretches the boundaries of where our legislative leaders have been sitting comfortably at.

Our country needs to know that their government values truth and equality over all else. Ketanji Brown Jackson sitting on the Supreme Court is long overdue, and she will start a conversation within the Court that will carry on for centuries to come.