Capehart’s outdated conjectures aside, unless she is quite elderly, any black female jurist was educated during America’s half-century of affirmative action. She could credibly have been admitted to university and law school with lower test scores and grades than white or, latterly, Asian applicants. As the American professions have been obsessed with diversity since about 1970, rather than having battled the bitter headwinds of prejudice, she could have been if anything over-promoted during her career. But I can’t vouch for the particular qualifications of a nominee who’s not been named yet, because I for one don’t think all black women are the same.

Biden’s identitarian promise on this vacancy is obnoxious, just as his promise to choose a female vice-president was obnoxious. (And how did that work out? Never mind Lucinda; Kamala is the ultimate incompetent diversity hire.) How much more preferable had he announced “My selection will not be a strict constructionist,” or “He or she will be a moderate, a unifier.” But no. She will be black, which restricts the pool to around 2 percent of American lawyers. All other qualifications are secondary.

Biden has been gently criticized for putting race and sex quite so overtly up front, but it would have made no difference had he kept these stipulations to himself. Americans would still have assumed that any black female nominee was chosen for her race and sex. Which is atrocious. But this is the inevitable consequence of racial and gender preferences, which hurt most those they feign to help. No matter how experienced or gifted, stand-out minorities are indelibly tainted by the presumption that they owe their ascendancy to a leg up. To employ an expression I’m prone to avoid: that, my friends, is genuine “systemic racism.”