Sorry, I was being unclear - I meant he was always going to lose when he appointed a SCJ. If he'd appointed white stale and pale he'd have been attacked. If he'd gone male and black the feminists would've had him by the throat, female and white the BIPOC community would've been in uproar. When you buy wholesale into identarianism you buy into never being able to make the 'right' choice.

Your point is absolutely correct, the mindset has so infiltrated the thought process that it doesn't realise how harmful and divisive it is.

Melanin and sex have long been a factor in the illusion of meritocracy, but a truly meritocratic system would disregard all aspects of a person's characteristics in favour of their competence to complete the task at hand. Breaking the illusion of meritocracy being pale and male required people like RBG and Thurgood Marshall to take their places. They paved the way for Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayer, Elena Kagan and even (dare I say it) Amy Coney Barrett.

Now the bar for entry is down (but not entirely broken), I would expect the best person to get the job, otherwise we're going to end up consistently bickering about whether X or Y group is sufficiently represented. It'll be a never ending battle which cannot be won - and in which a new inferior class of 'token judges' will be imagined in the general population. That's not a smart step for a democracy to take.