Notorious
Let me begin by saying that this is going to be a different kind of post than you’re used to seeing from me.
I started writing it half a dozen times in my head. I scrapped each one before my fingers ever landed on the keys.
I knew I had to write about the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but I kept asking myself the same question: How do I do justice to the legacy of an actual superhero?
When I read the announcement of her passing, I crumbled. I sat down on the floor because my legs couldn’t hold up under the weight of the news. I’m a logical person but no amount of rationalization could hold back the emotions that came up. It was like lava. Hot, immediate, unignorable. I had no other choice but to let it flow.
Justice Ginsburg was small in stature and quiet in voice, but she was a mountain of a woman. A mountain that could move mountains. And so she did.
I originally wanted to write that if I live to become a fraction of the woman she was, I would feel proud. But even as I wrote that sentence, my pinky finger stretched for the backspace button. Not out of hubris, but because I could almost hear her quiet defiance whispering in my ear, admonishing me for setting the bar too low.
I have looked to her for inspiration for so long it’s hard to remember a time when her stalwart presence was not there. It’s even harder to imagine it not being here right now.
Justice Ginsburg was the embodiment of what it means to be a bold introvert. She was a quiet woman with loud ideas, and she refused to let those ideas remain inside of her. For years—as a professor, a lawyer, the director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, a Circuit court judge, and a Supreme Court justice—she was as courageous with her ideas as she was tactical.
I have not read an article that captured the Justice’s inimitable kind of quiet power better than the one written by Nina Totenberg, with whom Justice Ginsburg shared a fifty-year friendship.
It wasn’t her moniker of Notorious RBG (one she accepted and enjoyed), nor her Instagram-able work out sessions (as impressive as they were) that made this woman a hero. It was her fierce intelligence and tireless fight for a better future for the citizens of her country.
She met challenges and injustice with determined intensity more often than anger—an ability I wish I had much more of.
In 2013, rage did make a rare appearance in one of her most moving dissents. It came from Shelby County v. Holder, the case that tore the throat out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It had been enacted to ensure no citizen could be denied the right to vote based on race or color. In a 5-4 vote, the court decided to do away with a key element of the act—a federal preclearance—that had helped to ensure fair voting practices because, they claimed, it was no longer needed. The days of racist discrimination in voting were over according to five of the justices.
Justice Ginsburg’s dissent stated: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Soon after the ruling, many states began going to reprehensible lengths to unfairly restrict voting.
That is about as much rage as she ever openly showed. But it was always there, and it was borne of deep caring and seemingly limitless empathy.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was filled-to-bursting with dignity.
It may seem obscene for me—someone whose writings are usually laced with swear words and hyperbole (to put it nicely)—to speak on dignity. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg played no small role in creating a reality where I have the greatest of dignities—that I can show up to the world fully, as a woman, as myself.
I cannot type one more word before affirming that this is a dignity that is still withheld from too many Americans. That dignity is facing the greatest threat it ever has in the form of a group racist misogynists who embrace fascist politics and are currently holding the country’s highest offices.
I know many of the people who read what I write are not from the United States. I can only imagine what this nation currently looks like to you. Know that Ruth Bader Ginsburg embodied a better version of us, arguably the best version of us.
For those of you who do call the U.S. home and want to honor the memory of our great champion, please register to vote. Request an absentee ballot (here or abroad) and, if you are able, deliver the ballot to your polling place in advance of the November 3rd election.
If you can offer time and/or monetary resources in the coming weeks, please visit Vote Save America, an organization dedicated to making sure those resources go where they are needed most. I implore you to do what you can to ensure we put an end to this administration and start doing the real work of rebuilding a nation.
Do it for Ruth.
Because she did it for you.