Some Republicans are now backing off the claim that Sonia Sotomayor was being racist when she said, “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.” But they keep repeating the idea that a white man who said that white males would make better judges would be out of the running for the Supreme Court seat. I heard it twice yesterday, from a caller to Rush Limbaugh (who agreed) and from Sen. Lindsey Graham.
They are right that the reaction would be different, and that might be a problem if the two statements were equivalent. But they aren’t. Let me illustrate the point with a noncontroversial example.
Suppose you were to call me “the watermelon-eating David Crisp.” I would think that was an odd way to refer to me, but I would not be in the least offended. I love watermelon. I have eaten it with great pleasure since I was a small child. If I ever am put to death for all of my crimes against humanity, watermelon will be on the menu for my last meal. So have at it.
But suppose you refer instead to the “watermelon-eating Barack Obama.” That would mean something far different and would be racially offensive for reasons that I should not have to explain and that have nothing to do with how he feels about watermelon.
The fact is that we do not live in a color-blind world, never have, and probably won’t in my lifetime. So if a white male says that white males make better judges than Latina females, the statement is immediately suspect because, for 150 years or so, the belief that white males made the best judges was essentially the default position in American jurisprudence. Not only did all the jobs go to white males, they were usually the only ones even considered. And since access to the kind of education and background that is needed to make it into the pool of people from whom justices are picked was for many years routinely denied to women and minorities, white males were often the only really qualified candidates.
So when a white male says that white males make the best judges, he seems to be endorsing decades of blatant discrimination. But when Sotomayor says what she said, she is saying something far different. She isn’t saying that white males ought to be excluded from the Supreme Court for the next 150 years. She isn’t saying that white males are genetically inferior. She’s just saying that what Latinas had to go through to make into that pool of potential justices might enable them to make better decisions than people who didn’t go through that.
That’s a debatable proposition, but it isn’t racist. When Chief Justice John Roberts famously compares judging to calling balls and strikes in a baseball game, that is held up as a model of fairness and objectivity. But Jeffrey Toobin reports: “In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.”
No doubt Roberts believes that he was just calling balls and strikes, and I am not enough of a lawyer to prove him wrong. But it’s possible that a judge who has spent his life on one side of the street might have trouble appreciating the legal arguments that come from the other side. And a judge who presumes that umpires and referees operate in some neutral other world just doesn’t understand the game (h/t Yglesias).
The fact is that umpires struggle against their own biases all the time. Their job is at its heart much simpler than that of Supreme Court justices. They typically have all of the facts right in front of them, and most of their decisions involve matters of physical space and time (Was the pitch over the plate? Did the slide beat the tag?).
Yet bias intrudes. Some players are nicer guys than others; some teams are more sympathetic. Sometimes umpires are just tired and want the game to be over. Sometimes umpires are suspected of deferring to players who are known to have a good sense of the strike zone. Experienced umpire baiters know that arguing a call isn’t about getting an umpire to change a previous decision — that never happens. It’s about getting him to change a decision that hasn’t been made yet.
Who makes a better umpire: One who takes all of that into account and constantly tests his judgment against his biases, or one who pretends that biases don’t exist?
As the saying goes, you make the call.
Sotomayor grasps the world from the perspective of both a white male and a Latina.
The job she now holds was created and held by white males for centuries. She has stepped into their wingtips and donned their robes. She wields the same power and walks in the same corridors.
She also knows what it’s like to survive the projects.
Of course she has broader perspective than someone who has lived in only one world. She has lived in both and knows both and can make better decisions than someone who has never left the wasp’s nest.
It never fails to amaze me how people can justify racism when they agree with it and decry its evils when they don’t agree with it.
Saying: “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” IS racist.
Why? Because it gives to one ethnicity and gender one generalized experience and, at the same time, attempts to quantify another ethnicity and gender into a separate category, while declaring one of the groups superior.
Even though the author of this article tries hard to prove that this is reality, it is not. Some Latinos and some white people have to struggle to reach the top. Believe it or not, just because your skin is white doesn’t mean you get an invite to the country club. In fact, some white folks even struggle HARDER than some Latinos depending on life’s situations.
The racist would discount these differences and speak in generalities about 100s of years of white rule and how this must mean that it is always easier for lighter skinned people. This obvious lack of struggle means a lack of character or appreciation for the difficulties of life. The non-racist might say that anyone from a socially disadvantaged station in life is capable of understanding the struggles of the underdog. This fight may happen more often for minorities (except, apparently, Asians, who despite being 2% of the US population aren’t considered minorities by such states as California) but that doesn’t mean that such “wisdom” is confined to any one group who is descended from a common ancestor.
The “logic” of this article reminds me of that Saturday Night Live skit where Eddie Murphy puts on white face, and all of a sudden, banks hand him piles of cash, and the whole white world embraces him. Right.
This is the same logic that leads to affirmative action. In 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was handed down, the prevailing wisdom was that the “races” should be separate. Well, we know now that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment says that such a rule denies the equal protection of the laws. However, in 2000, when one race is promoted over another based upon the color of his or her skin, “to make up for past evils,” it’s okay. Is such a rule any less a denial of equal protection? NO. It’s just that some people agree with the new racism, and disagree with the old racism that those old tyme ignorant people used to justify their racism. You see, the racism that we advocate with affirmative action is correct, while the old racism was wrong, so let’s ignore equal justice under law, and pretend that our holy ends justify our unconstitutional means.
In the end, racism is racism. Just because we agree with it does not make it right. The whole point of the rule of law is that we are supposed to be smart enough to avoid racism, especially when we agree with it (or are able to justify it). It’s only when all of us can avoid thinking like the author of this article will racism cease to exist.