Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y, said Thursday he would vote against the confirmation of one of President Trump’s judicial nominees because the candidate is white.

This is not a loose paraphrase of what he said. It is nearly verbatim his explanation for his “no” vote on the nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. The only thing missing is the senator stating specifically that he couldn't support a white nominee because two African-American nominees had failed to pass a Senate vote.

“The nomination of Marvin Quattlebaum speaks to the overall lack of diversity in President Trump’s selections for the federal judiciary,” Schumer told senators. “Quattlebaum replaces not one, but two scuttled Obama nominees who were African-American.”

He added, “As of Feb. 14th, 83 percent of the President Trump’s confirmed nominees were male, 92 percent were white. That represents the lowest share of non-white candidates in three decades. It’s long past time that the judiciary starts looking a lot more like the America it represents. Having a diversity of views and experiences on the federal bench is necessary for the equal administration of justice.”

First, it is morally wrong to deny a person a job because of his skin color. You can argue that Republican senators did the same to the President Barack Obama-appointed African-American nominees, but that relies on suspicion and theory — they were probably rejected for reasons of political partisanship. The senator from New York, on the other hand, is saying outright that he will not vote for Quattlebaum's nomination because he is white.

Secondly, please. This isn't about diversity. This is politics.

Lastly, Schumer’s speech is humorous considering he is the minority leader of a governing body that is overwhelmingly white and male. There are currently only 22 female senators, 17 Democratic and five Republican. We started this year with only 21, but Sen. Al Franken’s exit opened the door for Minnesota’s former lieutenant governor, Tina Smith, to take his seat.

There are also only three black senators out of 100, according to the Senate webpage.

It's extremely unlikely Schumer, himself a white male, will step aside anytime soon to balance out the mix.

In 1998, when he first ran for U.S. Senate, he had no problem elbowing out a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, and a Guatemalan immigrant, Eric Ruano-Melendez, for the Democratic nomination. No one could really blame him just because he ran, or just because he backed white Democrats for Senate like former Rep. Patrick Murphy and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., over lesser-known black competitors.

The senator can claim his opposition to Quattlebaum is about fairness, but his spotty track record says otherwise. It’s about politics.