Racist? No, try a Hispanic homer.

I wanted to see the Sotomayor quote on her being a better judge because of her Latina background in context, and found it here; it's from a speech to a Latino legal group in 2001. Let's kick this paragraph around for a little bit, for the final sentence is what has gotten a lot of conservatives hot and bothered.

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.

Is that racist? Or at least ethnocentric, since "Hispanic" is ethnic and not racial, despite the Latino activist group La Raza's name. Not in the way we normally use the word.

Let me try a thought experiment for a moment. We had a case in the news this week where a San Diego guy got busted (or at least threatened with a ticket) for having a Bible study in his house without a license. Let's say we had, say, Harriet Meiers, make this statement; "I would hope that a wise Christian woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a unchurched male who hasn't lived that life."

Would that statement be arrogantly Christianist (or whatever pejorative you want to slap in there)? Not really, since an evangelical Christian could tell the difference between an informal Bible study and a church service that someone from outside that church culture might not. Yes, that is a direct lift from the Sotomayor speech, changing Latina to Christian and white to unchurched.

Is she going to have experiences that you or I (I don't know of too many Hispanic members of the Peanut Gallery other than Ben Domenech, ex-Spudlet Marc Velasquez or my former Midland pastor Tim Ortiz) don't have? Yes. On the flip side, will we have experiences she hasn't had? Yes.

However, there are no shortage of judges with nicely-off European-descended parents with similar suburban or white-collar urban histories. Can they understand the plight of a poor minority kid? Yes, but it is a bit more foreign to them.

On the flip side, is that SD Bible study foreign to a lightly-observant Latina Catholic, where home Bible studies might not be a big part of their culture? That might be one case where a "wise Latina" would be at a disadvantage to an evangelical Anglo guy. She might be more fluent in the nuances of Santeria, but I'd be more fluent in finance and charismatic Christianity.

In an of herself, I don't see her as a better judge than, say, white-bread David Souter, to pick on a ideological peer. However, she will add an extra perspective to the court that, all else being equal, will help. She does come with a left-of-center slant that might make the court the worse for wear, but Sotomayor as a Latina is a plus; it's Sotomayor the liberal that worries me.

Racist? No more so than the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who knew the Greeks invented everything. A Hispanic homer (small H, as in a hard-core fan of the team) might be a fairer description.

Comments

[Alan K. Henderson]

Your comparison doesn't work at all. Sotomayor was saying that her ethnic heritage givers her an edge over white males when it comes to making judicial decisions. Judges (properly) interpret the law; Latinas do not have an inherent edge when it comes to understanding the context of statute and the Constitution.