O. K., SHE MISSPOKE

Judge Sotomayor's now famous statement about the
ability of white men to understand non-white women
was not about race at all. It was all about life experience,
and its relevance to the judicial process. The whole
speech (and it's a long one) is about equality and impar-
tiality and how difficult those are to maintain, by judges
or anyone else.

Of course we are all shaped by our life experiences. How
could we not? Our views are as well. What she was talk-
ing about was how as a Puerto Rican child growing up in
poverty, she had a better understanding of those circum-
stances than someone raised in privilege and power. She
should have stated it that way instead of referring to race,
because that makes people crazy. She woke up the luna-
tic fringe. The crazies are like a pack of dogs that smell
red meat.

Racism is a belief that a particular group of people just by
virtue of belonging to that group makes them superior to
all people of some other group. Judge Sotomayor's whole
speech rejected any hint of that. She shouldn't have men-
tioned color, because that's not what she meant.

What she said: "I would hope (didn't say it would happen)
that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her exper-
ience would more often than not (not always) reach a better
conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
(Emphasis and parentheses mine). She, for sure, should
have eliminated "white male" and substituted "someone"
instead. It wouldn't have changed her meaning, but it
would have gotten her off the hook.

In the very next paragraph she proved her point by adding:
"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 Su-
preme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a
gender discrimination case." What was their problem?
They simply had no understanding of the plight of victims
of discrimination! "No understanding" is another term for
"ignorance." Discrimination is always the result of ignor-
ance.

What I have just shown is that judges are not always
totally objective. If they were, they would always agree
on everything! They have all the same facts, and the same
law to interpret. But they perceive (see) facts differently.
What one judge sees as relevant, another doesn't see at
all, or discounts. Judge Sotomayor's whole lecture (to a
Latino law symposium) was about the long struggle of
minorities and women for fairness and understanding
and opportunity. It is more than ironic that her words
now have her again facing this struggle personally.