Ketanji Brown Jackson's qualifications are beyond reproach, but still in these confrontational and partisan times that very fact had no bearing on the Congressional proceedings to pick her as the seceding Supreme Court Justice. The dynamics of race, gender, and education converged under the probing lights of media coverage, both acknowledged and willfully denied. Displays of grace from one side and derision on the other became the circle of focus within the grasp of historical precedence of the first Black woman to serve on the highest court in the land. 

We get into how this moment ties inextricably to America's larger landscape of race and the burden of expectations from some much more than others, and how it still undergirds our society even under presumably the most dignified of circumstances.