Sonia, Stick to your Guns! (Serious)

I liked Sonia Sotomayor from the moment I first heard about her. It's mostly because of one of the first things about her that became widespread news was a "controversial" quip that's now been cited ad infinitum. Apparently, this quote has to be an asterisk that floats in her wake during her nomination hearings.

I was reading the Baltimore Sun during lunch today. I picked it up so I could do the crossword puzzles and the Jumble. I not only picked it up, but I paid the new outragous price of $1.06 for it. And you know what? It was a shell. A skeleton paper. All it had was the cover section. I had a pen in my hand a puzzler's mind, and now this? So what did I do? I read a news article and I scrawled notes in the margins. Why? Because I had decided that, today, I would start writing a blog. So I read the article "Court Pick Fights Back" (here--you can read it online! For free! See: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/bal-te.sotomayor15jul15,0,293579.story). I actually sat there and wrote rough draft for this blog entry on top of the obituaries.

If you peek at the article, you'll see that the headline explains how the Supreme Court nominee is "fighting back" against allegations that she will bring too much race or gender bias to the court. Way-back-when, Judge Sotomayor gave a rallying cry for the underrepresented, proclaiming that "a wise Latina woman" would be better suited on the bench that a white male.

The point, at least on a surface level: The experience that comes with being a woman and a minority gives a much greater perspective for a court justice.

The counterargument: Justices are charged with interpreting the constitution, and they are therefor interpreters of the law, not empathic or subjectively independent decision makers.

So, according to this article, how is Sotomayor so scrappily fighting back her accusers? Well, apparently by indicating that her remarks were "a rhetorical flourish that fell flat," or by saying that the statement "was bad because it left the impression that I believed that life experience commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge."

Good--you've let them know that you won't be applying unfair bias. But did you miss the point that inspired your original remark? You're certainly not hitting on the part of it that is inspirational and enlightening to me. It's a nuanced position, but let's try to make sense of it.

Let's start with a question: Why might someone who has lived her life facing discrimination and bias be a good suit for the nation's highest court? Is it because of the particular political perspective it would give her? I don't think that's what she meant. Someone who has seen her own life affected by others' biases can sniff out real bias when she sees it. The honest truth is that bias works its way into peoples' perspectives--and the laws they create--in subtle ways. Someone who hasn't lived a life learning to discern subtle biases in perspectives, statements, and even laws--well, this person might quite honestly be at a disadvantage to a "wise" individual who has seen these things.

Consider this: It took a nation about sixty years to collectively wise-up and decide that "separate is inherently not equal." If, in 1896, a little bit of diversified perspective had been injected into the all-white-male court that ruled over Plessy v. Ferguson, perhaps a wiser decision could have been made. How much collective experience facing subtly dehumanizing social conditions had these upstanding gentlemen faced? I'm taking a wild guess, but I'm going to say that it was minimal. It wasn't until 1954 that Brown v. Board would clean up that mess.

Potential objection: We're all a lot less prejudiced then they were then.

My counterargument: Certain issues have gradually been integrated into our nation's comfort zone of tolerance. Would the average citizen be able to notice how a law requiring "literacy tests" as mandatory for a public service post might be subtly racist? Maybe not--but those who've struggled to master two languages in their household in addition to a job-related skill unrelated to an extensive and esoteric English vocabulary? Maybe they'd see something different.

My big take-away point: I think Ms. Sotomayor was downright inspired when she made her initial comment. She used language that is definitely alienating for anyone uncomfortable assessing their own biases or examining whether they're as lucid as they claim. Like she said, there was a "rhetorical flourish" to it. I hope she hasn't backed down on the initial notion that surely inspired the claim--the notion that our experiences facing bias can inform us on how to eliminate such instances of bias in the future. When she's officially appointed, I hope that her wisdom--which has plenty to do with life experience--is on full display.