heef ([info]heef) wrote,
@ 2009-05-27 05:32:00
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Racism in justice
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052602846.html?hpid=opinionsbox1:

Judge Sotomayor has spoken about how gender, ethnicity and race influence a judge's views, and that should be one subject for her confirmation hearings. In a 2001 speech, she said: "The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. . . . Justice [Sandra Day] 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 that I agree with the statement. First, . . . 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."

First: Hypocrisy much? You deride a universal definition of wisdom, then rely upon it in your subsequent sentence.

Second: Yay racism and sexism. Go go go.

She may be qualified and bright, but that statement is pathetic and disturbing. Cue the apologists.

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[info]kassrachel
2009-05-27 12:59 pm UTC (link)
I agree with her that gender, ethnicity, and race tend to influence one's views. I don't see what's surprising or radical about that statement. (I'd go even a step further: from where I sit, anyone who claims that gender, ethnicity, and race are irrelevant to his views is so blind to his own privilege that he doesn't recognize his own enmeshment in the system of privilege which benefits him. That's the position Stephen Colbert satirizes every time he says he doesn't see race.)

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[info]heef
2009-05-27 07:37 pm UTC (link)
"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."

Yes, because a white male's experiences are *obviously* inferior to hers. She's putting herself on a pedestal on account of the life she's lived, couching it in terms *strictly* along racial lines, and then drawing an essentially-absurd generalization from it. Yes, Latina women can lead very rich lives. So can white men. She's saying the former's lives are, on average, richer than the latter.

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[info]kassrachel
2009-05-27 07:43 pm UTC (link)
Did you notice that I wasn't responding to that part of her comment? *g* I think when I initially read that in the Times, there was some offhand aside like "I shouldn't say this on tape," or something along those lines; it seemed pretty clear to me that it was an off-the-cuff remark which she regretted as it was coming out of her mouth. I'm not especially interested in arguing about it; I don't think it's a substantive statement.

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[info]heef
2009-05-27 07:55 pm UTC (link)
Fair enough. Goodness knows this country is used to verbal gaffes. I just hope she doesn't mean it.

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[info]kcobweb
2009-05-27 01:22 pm UTC (link)
What [info]kassrachel said. Plus, I think the words "I would hope" (in the last line) are key - she's saying that she *hopes* the Latina woman can benefit from her experiences - good and bad - which in this case the privileged white man hasn't had. She's citing the different perspective and the benefits it can bring, not saying "All Latinas are better than all white men, so nyaaaah!". At least, that's how I read it.

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[info]kcobweb
2009-05-27 03:13 pm UTC (link)
Thinking thinky thoughts after reading this: maybe she was responding to comments like Imhofe's - which I am sure she's heard over and over her whole damn life - and saying, "look, you don't have to worry about my gender and race - they've made me who I am *for the better*."

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[info]kcobweb
2009-05-27 04:22 pm UTC (link)
Aaaaand: the original context.

Okay, I'll stop now.

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[info]heef
2009-05-27 08:01 pm UTC (link)
The last line also includes the words "more often than not", which are the ones that I find particularly troublesome.

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[info]kcobweb
2009-05-27 08:32 pm UTC (link)
Well, I agree with you there.

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[info]scottahill
2009-05-29 05:22 am UTC (link)
I noticed a subtle point: her hypothetical Latina is wise, but her hypothetical white man is not so described. One would indeed expect a wise person to "more often than not" come up with better answers than an average person. (A picky feminist would now go on the attack and ask why you all assumed that the white man was wise!)

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[info]samtheeagle
2009-05-27 05:40 pm UTC (link)
Okay, I'll bite. I think she's saying not that decisions ought to be made on indivious grounds, or even that decisions are made on invidious grounds, but that where we stand often depends on where we sit. There are centuries of esoteric jurisprudential debates about whether positive, normative "law" ever can exist: objectivists believe that law inheres and awaits to be found objectively, assuming that there is a normative standard of objectivity that all judges can meet. Behavioralists take the same view except to the extent that judges can meet the standard: they say, instead, that judges always should aspire to meet it, but the inherent subjectivity of human experience makes ultimate attainment impossible. Never can we countenance any but the most diligent effort to meet this standard, but let's not kid ourselves into believing that judges are or ever can be robots.

What's so absurd about this proposition?

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[info]heef
2009-05-27 07:40 pm UTC (link)
I wasn't attacking the idea of a standard to which we ought to aspire, I was attacking the double standard present in her delivery.

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[info]winterborne
2009-05-27 08:51 pm UTC (link)
The last sentence is the part that troubles me a bit as well, though only a bit. There are a number of ways of interpreting it, some of which indeed look racist and sexist, others of which just look a little sloppy.

Does she mean that to be a Latina woman makes you inherently wise, due to a richness of experience that is necessarily lacking in a white male who has not lived "that" (e.g., a Latina woman's) life, then the statement looks racist, sexist, and worrisomely unsophisticated... indeed, unwise, when wisdom is the subject and also what we want from a justice.

Does she mean instead that there is a kind of experience that a Latina woman typically has that a white male typically does not, an experience that has value and contains the possibility of wisdom? Yes, this I will happily grant to be the case. This does not preclude the white male from having experiences that are themselves valuable, nor does it reduce the conversation to "Latina woman = wise".

I think the latter is the correct interpretation, based on what else I've read of Sotomayor's past work and opinions. However, I have enough uncertainty about that to be on alert.

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[info]heef
2009-05-28 09:39 am UTC (link)
Racist, sexist, or sloppy... which of those should a person prefer for their Supreme Court justice nominee? Yes, she has different experiences. Declaring that those experiences trend toward her opinion being more valid than someone else's is... ugh.

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[info]swagmonkey
2009-05-27 11:00 pm UTC (link)
I was with her up to the last line, where she goes beyond stating that different backgrounds tend to yield different positions/opinions/conclusions, to also refer to the (typical) female Latina positions as somehow "better" than those of white males. In any individual case, it may well be, but not with any consistency.

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[info]heef
2009-05-28 09:40 am UTC (link)
Yeah. At best, it was a pretty careless statement, and you'd think that a nominee for such a position would be far, far more careful.

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