Setting A Bad Precedent
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Nobody as far as I can tell has criticized Sotomayor for expressing pride in her roots and her community. ~Jim Antle
No, Limbaugh and Gingrich have just called her a racist and declared her unfit to be a judge because she has done so, because these people have mistakenly read her statements to say something that they do not say. (I will not dwell on the more direct whining about the pronunciation of her name or her culinary preferences.) No criticism of her pride to be seen here–move along! Contra Antle, I am not “trying to shoehorn” Sotomayor’s remarks “into a context of particularism and a paleoconservative understanding of diversity.” I wouldn’t dispute that she was speaking in a context of “multiculturalism, critical legal theory, and more mainstream forms of judicial liberalism.” Clearly, she was. As Jim keeps reminding us, she was speaking at Berkeley’s law school, and she is indeed a judicial liberal, albeit evidently not the fire-breathing radical sort that some of her early critics imagined. However, I would reject entirely the idea that she is espousing racism in the process, and I would insist that conservatives who have sympathies for particularism and decentralism ought to criticize Sotomayor for just about anything else besides her statements about her identity, which Jim has halfway admitted she is “entitled to celebrate.” Her critics keep talking about what would have happened to a white man had he said something comparable. Well, consider what is going to happen in the future to anyone on the right who expresses even a smidgen of pride in his culture or heritage after the blatantly unfair interpretations her words have received.
As bad as the double standard is today, it can always get worse. Indeed, if the critics believe in the reality of said double standard, they must know that flinging these epithets will simply increase the disparity of standards. They may think they are redressing the imbalance by applying an absurd standard to all, but this is like trying to use the Ring to defeat Sauron: you will be consumed, and Sauron will remain. It is rather like using the language of rights and autonomy to oppose abortion. At first, it seems like the smart move, because it speaks to people in a language they will readily understand, but by buying into the assumptions of one’s opponents the debate’s outcome is fixed before it even starts.
The greatest flaw with multiculturalism is that it is vapid, superficial and in large part negative, but as Jim mentions Sotomayor’s statement is noticeably different from that:
Sotomayor’s remarks are preferable to other multiculturalist pronouncements in that she expresses pride in an actually existing culture rather than a generic celebration of non-whiteness.
Jim then resorts to a standard complaint against multiculturalism:
But at its root is a point of view where some cultures and heritages can be celebrated while others cannot (some are in fact denigrated).
There is truth to this when speaking about multiculturalism in general, as I have known first-hand in many school settings (memorably, I was informed by a classmate that, as a white person, I had no culture to celebrate), but what Sotomayor’s critics never seem to do is to get to a point where they can show that she has applied this lamentable double standard. If she does hold such a view, we cannot determine this from what she said eight years ago, and even if she believed this it would still make no sense for conservatives to turn around and deplore her celebration of her culture and heritage by pretending that an unobjectionable statement is actually an expression of pernicious racism. By the rules her critics are setting up, woe betide the particularist or decentralist who wants to stress the importance of place and rootedness. The localist who bemoans deracination will be even more of a target than he is today. No one who wants to promote this agenda could possibly want that. After all, someone will be at the ready to declare that all of this is code for racism and other ills, and Sotomayor’s critics will have provided a very public, memorable precedent for misinterpreting statements in just this way.
P.S. On the Ricci case, I have to keep driving home the point that one can believe that the panel’s ruling was entirely consistent with current law and that Ricci and his co-workers were shafted, as Jim puts it. As Noah said earlier in this debate, the latter problem is a matter of policy, and conservatives might profitably focus their energies on changing that policy and invoke Ricci’s case to make that change. Here is Noah:
Weighing conflicting claims to justice and coming up with workable rules for adjudicating them that can be the basis of social consensus is what the political process is supposed to do.
Now it seems likely that the Court is going to reverse the appeals court in the matter of Ricci, but what conservatives should be spending their time on is working to change the law so that such a case becomes far less likely. The idea that no one is questioning whether the New Haven firefighters in the case have been badly mistreated is odd. For the last week and a half, it seems as if quite a lot of people have been openly and actively questioning this very thing.
Jim writes elsewhere:
In the real world where this ideology has been in vogue, expressions like Sotomayor’s routinely coexist with accusations of racism against conservatives. I’d like to hear of an example where it has ever been the other way around.
I’m sorry, but if we are talking about the real world, could we remember back to the days of 2008 when Obama was routinely accused of racism or at least of sympathy with racists, and we were treated to more than a few celebrations of “Real America”? Jim might object and say that Obama did not suffer the same fate that would have befallen a white conservative Republican, which is true, but that didn’t make the obsession with Obama’s pastors and the deployment of guilt by association attacks any more sensible. Then as now, all of the haranguing of Obama about alleged racism simply reinforced the very double standard that bothers conservatives so much.
Jim:
Unlike some others, I have not actually called Sotomayor a racist…
No, not in so many words. What Jim said was this:
Moreover, the demographics of this country have reached the point where racialist and separatist statements [bold mine-DL] by nonwhites who aspire to high office have to be held to the same standard as those of whites.
So Jim thinks her statement was racialist, and not racist? Is that it? I can grant that there is a distinction between the two, but either way the misinterpretation is still pretty remarkable.
P.P.S. Jim concludes:
The only way I see any “boomerang” effect for conservatives is if they actually say or do something racist.
This is the whole point. What constitutes “something racist” is being watered down so much that far more conservatives will be deemed to have said or done “something racist” for the most simple expressions of pride in their own ancestry and culture. Had Sotomayor actually said that her “race physiologically qualifies” her to be a judge, that would be one thing, but yet again what she did say is being turned into something very different.
Update: Jim responds at some length. I will be writing my final post on the subject in reply, but there was one point I wanted to make now. Jim says that “the bulk of criticism of her Latina lecture that I have seen — and certainly the entirety of my criticism — has not been her discussion of her background. It has concerned her arguments with Miriam Cedarbaum and Sandra Day O’Connor about impartiality and race neutrality.” As for what he has seen, I will take Jim’s word for it, so I assume he would find Jeffrey Lord’s article on this subject, which dwells on the former with the zeal of an anti-racist inquisitor and barely touches on the latter, to be quite unsatisfactory. Likewise, I trust he would find Thomas Sowell’s weak analysis lacking as well.
Filed under: politics
Her critics keep talking about what would have happened to a white man had he said something comparable.
Sure they do. Because they are all white people obsessed with their cultural resentments, and indifferent, at best, to the views of others. The two categories need not collapse in on each other, of course, but non-tribalists seem make up about 5% of self-described conservatives, and 0% of Republicans, these days.
Oh, and Samuel Alito did say something comparable, and no one noticed or cared, because it was entirely unremarkable. Were white people not unduly obsessed with race, this (near decade-old) remark by Sotomayor would pass with the same treatment as did Alito’s statement at his confirmation hearing.
“But at its root is a point of view where some cultures and heritages can be celebrated while others cannot (some are in fact denigrated).”
I’m still not sure which *cultures* are denigrated in America. Virtually every country in Europe has some measure of pseudo-multicultural celebration, from German Oktoberfests to Irish pubs. Then there’s the “real America” or “American small-town values” etc which are basically celebrations of generally-though-not-exclusively white American culture and heritage.. These things seem even more superficial and stereotypical than when non-whites do them, but that really shouldn’t strike anyone as too surprising, should it?
You said something totally interesting to me, Daniel.
“It is rather like using the language of rights and autonomy to oppose abortion. At first, it seems like the smart move, because it speaks to people in a language they will readily understand, but by buying into the assumptions of one’s opponents the debate’s outcome is fixed before it even starts.”
If I take you right, you admit that the idea of rights and autonomy is opposed to the position you hold with respect to abortion. You admit that if the question is framed as one of rights and autonomy, you cannot support your position.
So, if it isn’t a matter of rights and autonomy, then what is it that underlies your position with respect to abortion? You can no longer use the death of the fetus as an argument, because that goes directly back to the rights of the woman as an autonomous being.
Really, this is something totally new to me, that rights are not at issue. I am very interested in your response, should you choose go give one.
Jake
This whole discourse of competing rights is what lead to the creation of abortion rights in the first place. As I understand it, abortion is wrong because it violates the dignity of the human person, desecrates the image of God and ignores the obligations we have to the weak and defenseless. It also sunders in the most violent way the obligations of parents to their children; it is a kind of impiety directed toward children. In the end, competing rights claims are competitions over power, and unborn children can never effectively contest for that power because they are dependent and helpless. The very dependency that serves as the basis for denying the child the rights of a full person is the thing that obliges us to protect that child. In my view, it is ultimately far more effective and much more true to think of this question in these terms. I have not encountered many pro-lifers who share that view as of yet, but I will keep working on it.
Jim wrote a bunch of things that I more or less agree with, but with all the abstraction over identity I think it’s worth emphasizing one particular prosaic and practical thing. Besides the context of multiculturalism, CLS and all the rest of it, there’s the more basic context of a judge adjudicating competing claims in a court of law.
The whole point of the robes, the pillars, the gavel and all the rest of it is that there is such a thing as impartial justice under the law. Even if you and I might agree that a person’s ethnic or other identity will necessarily factor into their decisions from
the bench, it is still inappropriate for a judge to acknowledge this, and even more inappropriate for a judge to publicly acknowledge and defend it, even to the point of asserting it as a positive good as Sotomayor did.
Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate your response very much. I won’t sidetrack this thread more than I already have. :)
Jake
And about the broader subject, let’s note that the one of the very important benefits of particularity is that the various “creeds” do not compel assent from anyone who is not inclined to give it. That is obviously in jeopardy in this case where Sotomayor is a judge, speaking the context of her decision making process as a judge.
Koz, did you completely miss the buzz that Alito say virtually the same thing? Do you now oppose Alito on the grounds you appear to oppose Sotomayor? Or is it the case that now that a conservative judge is already seated we can close that door?
This is Alito responding to a question from Coburn, “And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”
I can only surmise that when Alito says “take that into account” he means that it affects his reasoning in the case. If it affects his reasoning, it is because he believes his life and background provide him an insight others might not have and therefor his reasoning is better.
Sotomayor 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.” Sotomayor’s statement is logically and linguistically equivalent to Alito’s. Both believe their lives and background give them insight into cases not otherwise available to many other individuals, and both believe they are better judges for that insight.
The fact that you prefer Alito’s statement to Sotomayor’s is proof only that you prefer Alito, which proof doesn’t speak to Sotomayor’s or Alito’s qualifications at all.
Jake
“The fact that you prefer Alito’s statement to Sotomayor’s is proof only that you prefer Alito….”
Well, yes.
Otoh, I never heard of that particular statement from Alito. I have to think the “buzz” over it was pretty much muted. In any case, I have no problem with saying he shouldn’t have said that.
This seems sloppy:
Do you have anything to say about multiculturalism on the merits, or do individuals, whom you take it upon yourself to identify as “multiculturalists,” merely annoy you? You just aren’t doing it well enough! :)
I imagine you’ve got many good reasons to not like it, probably having to do with the fact that a central conceit of multiculturalism is that culture is a veil, that can be tried on and disposed of, and that culture hides us from a Rouseeauian “true” nature and from each other. This is probably a good reason not to like it, and I didn’t have to get personal, either… But I understand your opinion.
Even if you and I might agree that a person’s ethnic or other identity will necessarily factor into their decisions from the bench, it is still inappropriate for a judge to acknowledge this, and even more inappropriate for a judge to publicly acknowledge and defend it, even to the point of asserting it as a positive good as Sotomayor did.
I agree with this up to a point. Obama’s emphasis on “empathy” and life experience doesn’t resonate with me at all and isn’t something I think should be all that important in the nominating/confirmation process.
That said, it seems non-controversial to me (and to most people, including you, if I read you right) that a person’s experiences, including their culture and their upbringing, inform who they are and how they make decisions, work through problems, etc. If subjective experience and ethnic solidarity overwhelmed sound legal reasoning and judicial temperament that would be one thing. But everyone keeps harping on this one speech without demonstrating a pattern of poor decisions by Sotomayor. That implies that her comments were innocuous and that now, years after the fact, people are trying to turn them into something they aren’t.
Frankly, given that Obama was never going to nominate the kind of judge I’d prefer, I’m just glad he went with a judge at all. We could have gotten “empathy” and “life experience” pre-packaged in the form of a politician–an unqualified phony in the mold of the pre-disgrace John Edwards. Instead we got a well-qualified appeals court judge whose record plainly indicates that she’s not any kind of radical. And, just as they did with Obama himself, some on the right are going berserk trying to paint her as a left-wing nutjob when she’s just not. That’ll probably work about as well on Sotomayor as it did on Obama.
Mein Host -
First off, I would like to acknowledge your formulation of the pro- life position….that was lovely.
Secondly, speaking as someone who used to practice, your interpretation of _Ricci_ is exactly right. The folks who hate the decision are really hating the result in the old _Bakke_ case. I sympathize, as I do not think you can square Affirmative Action with the Equal Protection clause. I say that while also acknowledging that, on the whole, the effects of Affirmative Action have been very salutary. But it was not within the proper scope of Sotomeyor’s power to overrule 40-50 years of statutory code and Supreme Ct. precedent. This point has been made, over and over again, by attorneys more able than I. Yet still we get shrill Lou Dobbsian babble on this truly elementary point.
Koz: Otoh, I never heard of that particular statement from Alito. I have to think the “buzz†over it was pretty much muted.
True dat. Yet the number of claims that a white person making such a statement would be “crucified” approaches infinity.
les wrote:
True dat. Yet the number of claims that a white person making such a statement would be “crucified†approaches infinity.
There’s nothing in the Alito snippet that’s comparable to Sotomayor’s line about a “wise Latina” making better judgements than whites. That’s what would have led to a crucifixion.
Jake wrote:
I can only surmise that when Alito says “take that into account†he means that it affects his reasoning in the case. If it affects his reasoning, it is because he believes his life and background provide him an insight others might not have and therefor his reasoning is better.
That’s a helluva stretch. First, he never said his reasoning was “better”. He simply said it affects it, and he said it came in second to the what the law said. Second, he never made any sort categorical racial comparison, which Sotomayor did. If he had made such a comparison, you lot would have been shrieking for blood.
Derek, ask yourself, would Alito say it affects his decisions in a bad way or a good way? I can only read his statement as saying that is particular background allows him to make better decisions. Yes, he doesn’t say better than who – but just who is there? How many non white male or women justices have there been? For what job was he interviewing? So his judgement would be better than who? As for Sotomayor, almost every alternative would be, what, a white man?
There is no appreciable difference in content, only in context – Alito interviewing for the job as a Supreme Court Justice, while Sotomayor giving a speech at Berkely in 2001. The argument could be made that Alito’s words are far more important, given the context.
Jake
I can only read his statement as saying that is particular background allows him to make better decisions. Yes, he doesn’t say better than who …
Well, that is rather the point. He doesn’t name individuals or races. At best one could interpret it as saying it could make him a good candidate. He’s clearly noting that it is a human tendency needing to be controlled. That’s why he says things like “I can’t help but…”
That was not what Sotomayor was saying. She wasn’t saying her experience would make a good candidate–which would be fine–but that her racial background would categorically make her BETTER than the white guy.
As I’ve said in another thread, this isn’t the worse thing in the world. I generally agree with Daniel that stuff like this should not be a big deal, but it is, and it’s your side that makes it a big deal. So you’ll get your nominee, but we’re going to highlight your hypocrisy and strained comparisons to point out how empty your accusations truly are. If you want to call a halt to your mau-mauing guys like Pickering. Great. Maybe we can all win.
The argument could be made that Alito’s words are far more important, given the context.
Uh, no. Not. Even. Close. Jake. Sotomayor was giving a speech she thought about, prepared and edited. Alito was trying to give an honest, restrained and unprepared answer to a question. Further, there were no racial connotations in his answer–you and yours have read that into his statement.
The stupidity of these people is remarkable. In 220 years, we’ve never had a single latino Supreme Court justice, and only two other women, due entirely to a long history of blatanat, institutional raciism on the part of the white males who have dominated this country and the Court. Suddenly, we’re supposed to pretend all that is history, and any latina woman nominated to the court is both unfit, and if she claims to be fit, or maybe ever fitter, than others, she’s suddenly the racist. This is so transparently a continuation of the same, previous racism by other means, that it’s amazing these people think they can get away with it, that they’ve come up with some very clever stunt to reverse the impression that they have been the perpretrators of racism, and now they are the victims of it. Oh, cry me a river. When white men are actually underrepresented in government, the judiciary, the economic sphere, etc., then we can look into these charges of racism.
Also, the major problem with a white man, such as myself, proclaiming pride in my race, is that it’s way too broad a race to have any personal identity with “whiteness” itself. I can take a certain pride in my German heritage, but I don’t really identify myself as “white” in the personal or cultural sense, and there is nothing except skin color to link such people together, not language, history, culture, etc. Many white people are proud to be of Irish, Italian, English, Dutch, Polish origin, etc., but it’s really only the out and out racists among us who speak about “white pride”. So when people start complaining that they can’t get up and declare their pride in “white culture”, they actually sound like closet neo-Nazis, and this is very unnattractive even to most white people. But no one gets upset when an Irish-American, all of whom are white, takes pride in his Irishness or marches in a Saint Patrick’s day parade to celebrate his ethnic identity, or says that the Irish people are the best in the world. We accept it as simple “friendly narcissism”, and don’t get paranoid that the Irish are taking over this country.
The stupidity of these people is remarkable.
Physician, heal thyself. Anyone comparing the Irish to the problems were having in the Southwest is in no position to accuse anyone of stupidity.
Also, the major problem with a white man, such as myself, proclaiming pride in my race, is that it’s way too broad a race to have any personal identity with “whiteness†itself.
Because Hispanics are narrow tightly defined group? It’s a group every bit as diverse as Europeans when it comes to nationalities. She was appealing beyond her Puerto Rican nationality to a larger racial group.
Of course, the rules are different for minorities than whites, and that’s the problem. You like to identify with your German forbearers. That’s nice, but what about whites in my situation? I don’t identify with some specific foreign heritage. I have way too many antecedents from too many different areas in Europe to do that. If you want to say I should identify myself as simply American, I say fine, but that goes for everyone else. No more dual loyalties. Otherwise, given the demographic drift, I suggest you get used to whites identifying themselves as an ethnic interest group and acting on that identity.
Daniel, I’d agree that your statements on abortion are quite eloquent and to the point. However, I don’t see that what you are advocating is anything other than a “rights” argument without using that word. Clearly, you feel that defending the unborn is an obligation we have, because the unborn have some intrinsic “right” to live, which they cannot defend themselves, because they have no voice. This is virtually identical to the logic of those who defend the rights of minorities and others who the system doesn’t tend to listen to or respect. You don’t use the word “rights”, but you use the same argument, in effect, and it means the same thing. The only difference is that those on the pro-choice side don’t see fetuses as human beings with a right to live. You do. I’m not sure how you make an effective pro-life argument without invoking the notion that fetuses have rights that those who have power must protect. In effect, if not in language, you do.
There’s nothing in the Alito snippet that’s comparable to Sotomayor’s line about a “wise Latina†making better judgements than whites. That’s what would have led to a crucifixion.
Derek, I find the two statements almost totally comparable. It seems to me that most people, including our host, read Sotomayor’s statement in context as “a wise person with experience of a situation, will make a better judgment than a (similarly placed) person without that experience.” And Alito said his experience will improve his judgment in areas where his experience is pertinent. He didn’t specifically say “improve over a judgment lacking experience;” but what else does it mean? No, Alito didn’t speak to race; but neither did Sotomayor, in the sense you seem to mean it. She said her experience as a Latina will make her judgment better, where that experience is pertinent. I really think it’s a stretch to read it as some kind of “Latina judgment is better than whitey judgment, everywhere and always.” In fact, I think you have to start there, to get there.
There is truth to this when speaking about multiculturalism in general, as I have known first-hand in many school settings (memorably, I was informed by a classmate that, as a white person, I had no culture to celebrate),
Complaining about multiculturalism always seemed to be a case of some sort of Freudian sour-grape’s, but this quote lays it bare. I remember making German chocolate cake for a project in 1st grade revolving around selecting a type of food that represented one’s ethnic heritage. I don’t remember running into any problems nor being called a fascist. And I grew up in a fairly racially diverse, immigrant full school district where one would imagine political correctness reigned.
But most of the complaint’s about multiculturalism seem to be a laundry list of poor, idiotic choices from the hands of administrators or public officials and don’t represent any sort of real sort of cohesive ideological platform to rail against. Many diversity efforts or celebrations are often ham-fisted, and there is a lack of sincerity sometimes, but most are an honest attempt by people to be more inclusive of others. Which can only be viewed as threatening if one imagine’s culture as a zero-sum game. Maybe I was brainwashed by PBS, but I do think most attempts at diversity and inclusion are valuable, no matter how awkward they can come out sometimes.
The anecdote wasn’t meant to be bitter. I thought it demonstrated quite effectively that the “cultural” part of multiculturalism is often assumed to be anything other than that of the majority. The reason the remark has stayed with me is that it made clear that “inclusion” inevitably entailed dismissing and ignoring the majority. This is not one of the biggest problems in the world, but this is what multiculturalism often means in practice.
It seems to me that most people, including our host, read Sotomayor’s statement in context as “a wise person with experience of a situation, will make a better judgment than a (similarly placed) person without that experience.â€
Well, les, it seems to me that most people wouldn’t let that fly if it had been reversed–even in full context–and you pretty much admit that by reading all sorts of things in Alito’s statement. Mind you, I wouldn’t normally give Sotomayor a hard time over this, but given the changing demographics we face these double standards need to be pointed out.
No, Alito didn’t speak to race; but neither did Sotomayor, in the sense you seem to mean it.
That’s just flat denial of what’s in front of your nose. The weird thing is that you may just believe it. “Rich” Latin experience was contrasted favorably with blank white breadness. The contempt implied in her statement is plain to all but those who refuse to see.
Look, guys, if Sotomayor had been Irish, and she’d made some remarks years ago at an Irish Church that growing up in a tough Irish neighborhood in NY had given her the kind of experience that could make her a better judge than some Ivy Leaguer from Greenwich CT, no one would raise an eyebrow about this. Certainly not conservatives. This is a manufactured outrage, pure and simple.
I should have said “preppie from Greenwich”, seeing as how Sotomayer actually was became Ivy Leaguer.
“Rich†Latin experience was contrasted favorably with blank white breadness
Unless I’ve read someone else’s statement: your pejoratives did not come from Sotomayor’s mouth; and the context is “in a situation where the experience is relevant.” You’re certainly entitled to prefer Alito’s experience and the manner in which it informs his judgment. It’s equally reasonable to work for/against a politician or judicial nominee based on your preference. Pretending there’s some significant difference between the two, rendering one “pure” and the other “impure,” isn’t going to lend much weight to your argument.
I wish someone would define “multicultural” for me. Am I multicultural because I read Marquez and Cortazar? Because I know what it feels like to be called a spic? Or am I a part of white culture because I’ve never been red-lined?
It seems petty to point out that plenty of hispanics are blond, blue-eyed caucasians, as a trip to Venezuela will demonstrate. But it seems like some folks these days have forgotten that the distinguishable terms “hispanic” and “latino” are cultural terms only, and barely rise to the level of ethnic markers. So talking about hispanics as a race is knda bizarre.
Sotomeyor’s comments seem fairly unremarkable to me, i took them to mean ” I know what it is to be in an ethnic group that is ‘first fired – last hired’. I know what it is to run the risk of being disproportionally prosecuted. I will give those people a fair shake”
The lady is an ex-prosecutor, for cripes sake. She is the epitome of the status quo Judge. The hyperbole about her being some kind of racist firebrand or, hilariously, some super-leftist is just madness.
The anecdote wasn’t meant to be bitter. I thought it demonstrated quite effectively that the “cultural†part of multiculturalism is often assumed to be anything other than that of the majority. The reason the remark has stayed with me is that it made clear that “inclusion†inevitably entailed dismissing and ignoring the majority. This is not one of the biggest problems in the world, but this is what multiculturalism often means in practice.
Well thats kind of my point. Most of what gets railed against as “multiculturalism” is idiotic decisions done by school administrators or other public officials, just like how every holiday season the war on Christmas revolves around a handful of minor decisions in public school districts. It hardly ever rises to the level of nefariousness that many people ascribe to, though I imagine considering your response to alot of Republican caterwauling, you are not enthused by O’Reilly’s Christmas shenanigans either.
But again your statement that “inclusion” means ignoring the majority or being outright hostile presumes that culture, or more specifically, cultural/historical education is a zero-sum game. In a sense it is, since there is a finite amount of time in the classroom or funds for cultural activities. I don’t think however incorporating newer literature, or deviating from a kind of Cleopatra’s Nose form of history, is bad. Its also hard to imagine how “activist” it is; it mostly reflects honest to goodness demographic changes, and an attempt to keep good relations between disparate groups.
You could interpret Sotomayor’s speech as stating that some races are innately better than others — she’s a Latino David Duke. You could also interpret them as being about the effects of gender, culture and upbringing. People make this type of statement all the time — just try and count the number of times a politician has talked favorably about their small-town upbringing, or working class background or being the son of immigrants, or knowing what it’s like to be a mother, or their Irish/Greek/Italian/whatever family heritage. People usually don’t get too upset about this sort of thing, even though a politician would get in trouble if they substituted a word or two and talked with pride about being the “son of white people” or their “white family heritage”.
I think that all of the attention that is being paid to a speech she gave 8 years ago indicates the weakness of the case against her, and that the opposition is much more political than substantive. There’s little evidence that she’s particularly radical, given the range of judges that one could reasonably expect Obama to nominate. She’s written about 380 judicial opinions in the past 10 years and nobody has come up with a pattern of racism in her decisions or opinions (Larison has already talked about why Ricci isn’t proof of those things). But, a few quotes from that speech and her being a Latina provide a nice way to rile up the GOP base, which apparently requires perpetual riling.
But, a few quotes from that speech and her being a Latina provide a nice way to rile up the GOP base, which apparently requires perpetual riling.
It does seem that way; which is kinda fascinating, since “riled” really appears to be the default state, regardless of the state of reality.
Re: Conig,
“In 220 years, we’ve never had a single latino Supreme Court justice ..due entirely to a long history of blatanat, institutional raciism on the part of the white males who have dominated this country and the Court.”
Hmm… and what was the demographic composition of the nation during all but the last 40 of those 220 years? If you randomly picked people from the 1700’s to the 1970’s what were the chances of picking a latino? Might that explain some of this supposed anti-latino ‘institutional racism’ — which in sane terms, that is, as understood in any of the non-western countries I have lived in — translates to accumulated wealth and power do to inheritance and rooted background?
“Suddenly, we’re supposed to pretend all that is history, and any latina woman nominated to the court is both unfit, and if she claims to be fit, or maybe ever fitter, than others, she’s suddenly the racist.” T
No, suddenly, since we have already been pretending that no person or people is more fit than others, we expect other people the keep up the pretense. The racism or, more properly, racialism is the saying that it makes me better than those people, as opposed to better then I would have ben otherwise. This is just repackaging liberal sensitivity. At worst, the crime is playing the liberal victim game.
“have been the perpretrators of racism, and now they are the victims of it. Oh, cry me a river. When white men are actually underrepresented in government, the judiciary, the economic sphere, etc., then we can look into these charges of racism.”
Just because some guy or girl gets off the boat, and finds he doesn’t have everything that the natives have — doesn’t qualify as racism. It means he has yet to build up the political/economic connections. Institutional racism is when the opportunity is bared. Apparently, your point is that racism will only be over when everything is demographically proportionate — which it never will be since there will always be a new group coming and some groups outcompeting others. Not only is this a bizarre mentality, but more importantly the whole racism thing, hardly applies to the post-1970’s massive waves of immigrants. Where is the evidence of racism here? That 15% of the CEO’s or Supreme Court Justices are not Hispanic, when most the Hispanic population just came here within the last two generations?
“proclaiming pride in my race, is that it’s way too broad a race to have any personal identity with “whiteness†itself.”
I don’t know about you, but my parents were pushed to anglosaxonize , give up their language and most of their culture. I am glad to see you have something to identify with other then being ‘white’ = western. For the rest of us, we are about as ethnically ‘German’ as we are English, Irish, Polish, ect. Instead we see our roots in the Hellenized ,Germanized Christianity, the classics and what is generally know as western Civ, That was the trade of to fit in back them. Now that our society has agreed to become multicultural, of which western (ie European) is but one aspect, it is only reasonable to identify there with.
Those out and out racists like me, are open-minded to the ideas that now western ideals as but one component of this current society, and so do not have a problems with ‘white pride’ insofar as it means a certain historical identity. Those like me, and I hope some others on this forum, really don’t care how this is labeled or how this sounds to timid white people. They obviously have not got the memo — in the late 80’s and early 90’s this idea of not forming a ‘white sense’ was accepted under the pretense that other groups — ie minorities could be assimilated under more or less western ideas. With Multiculturalism, that project has been given up.
“But no one gets upset when an Irish-American, all of whom are white, takes pride in his Irishness”
Obviosuly that is because ‘people’ are afraid of a large majority block identifying one way. Given demographic shifts, that shortly will no longer be an issue. Those white priders are simply ahead of the times.
Re: Conig
“Look, guys, if Sotomayor had been Irish…”
So, what are you suggesting the problem is?
The democrates played this well, they blocked Bush’s 2001 attempt to get a conservative Hispanic on the bench and then put a liberal, identity, pro-affirmative action one up — to be the first. So now of course any attack on here is, as Conig implies, racist — since, of course, that’s the only reason someone would criticize her. Not say, the evidence of her identity politics (La Raza, Ricci Case, said coments, college activism, ect), which conservatives have traditionally opposed.
Since ya’ll seem to like to put these comments in context, lets put them in context. Since criticisms of Sotomayor, are contextualized by the media as racist — why else, of course — its only logical to strike out at her at racist. Its the law of political smear — if somebody does it to you, you have to be willing to do it back. You throw it back at them, then when things settle down, you go on to articulate you principle point — in which case its that Sotomayor’s empathy judgments or identity judgements. This is the logical way — given that people are not particularly logical — to fight back.
Politically, this is problematic because many people will see this as racist, but as Conig shows us, those people already contextualize it that way anyways, so I don’t see much a loss. And if conservatives do not fight back, then they are just seen as prey to the liberals ‘minority’ politics, by which I mean the tired line of victimization as a unifier — we see used by the liberals throughout the west and by other not so liberal ethno-activist groups, that play the same line — whether or not there is even a meaningful claim to male/ white/ westerm/ christian/ conservative (or whatever else ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturism’ does not mean) persecution.
(Apologized for saying the obvious, but apparently some people here do not follow contemporary politics.)