The line that has inspired Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh to say, bluntly, that yes, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, is genuinely racist, is this one: “… I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Her defenders’ quick response is that the line is taken out of context. Well, let’s give it some context. A much longer quote from the 2001 lecture in which she made that remark is here:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

There’s a lot more context there, to be sure. Does it change the meaning and import of what she said? I don’t think so. She stated that she believed a “wise Latina woman” would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male. Surrounded with a lot of self-serving rationalization, the remark still stands. And it was not an off-the-cuff remark.

It’s been clarifying for me to consider this analogy:

If I caught myself just thinking — let alone publicly declaring in a premeditated fashion — that my conclusions as a white male were inherently wiser than those of a Latina woman, due to the very fact of my being a white male, I would have to look in the mirror and conclude that I was a fundamentally racist guy. I would go to the telephone book, look up the nearest Aryan Nation office, and apply for membership. It would be the only logical course of action.

People will say, and no doubt have said already, that she was talking about her “life experience” as a Latina woman, versus that of a white man, but that is no more than adding a level of excuse to the rationalization. This woman is set to sit as one of nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. If she truly believes that her own “life experience” makes her definitively wiser than a white man — and that is what her remark tells us quite clearly — then it is a genuinely racist attitude, and it should certainly disqualify her from sitting on that bench. I agree with those who are calling it just like it is on this matter. I think that hedging on an issue like this, in the interests of being polite and not ruffling feathers, is to give in to a kind of big lie, and a dangerous one.

She will, of-course, almost certainly be confirmed as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

…

Addendum 8:42 pm: President Barack Obama effectively concedes the point on Sotomayor’s 2001 remarks, but claims (without evidence) that she “would have restated it.” Well, no doubt she will go to some lengths to finesse the issue when she appears before the U.S. Senate. But so what? A lot of people would like to be able to do things over again in order to evade later consequences. The fact remains that her remarks speak for themselves, and her willingness to make them in a prepared lecture illustrate how deeply she holds these views. Her belief in her own correctness overwhelmed her commonsense and her political sense.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Rolling down like water
• Supremes
• Abdul Rahman Ripples …