Richness of Experience

** While I am out of town a few of my good friends from the blogging world have graciously stepped up and written some guest posts to fill the void. This post comes from Z at It’s the Thought That Counts.

 

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s nominee for Justice Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court, certainly has an inspiring background. (In the words of Jon Stewart: Is that her life story, or did Oprah create her in a focus group?) By now you’ve probably heard about Sotomayor’s own take on her background, from a lecture at Berkeley Law in 2001. So as not to take this quote out of context, I’ll include the preceding few sentences.

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.

When Sotomayor said “the richness of her experiences,” she implied that others – white men, for sure, and probably also white women – couldn’t have experiences which are as rich. That’s what everyone’s so upset about, and I don’t blame them. It’s offensive to say that the “experience” had by people in one demographic is morally superior to that of another demographic, no matter which demographic is which. The picture it paints is an odd one. It sounds as though white men have the default American experience, and if you fall into any other special categories, you get the default American experience plus other, special bits of knowledge and understanding.

That’s bad in two ways. First, I’m not happy about the idea of a Supreme Court justice who is not ashamed to say, effectively, that some Americans are more valuable than others. Additionally, though, it entrenches the very problems of racism and discrimination which Sotomayor presumably wants to solve by being an outspoken Latina role model, by reinforcing the idea of white people as normal and ethnic minorities as exotic and different.

Before we get too upset, let’s note that she did go on to say the following:

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 Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

With these two paragraphs added, I think the message Sotomayor was sending becomes much more palatable. It’s hard to deny that people’s life experiences at all color the way they judge on the court. A person who’s experienced poverty is somewhat more likely to be sympathetic to the concerns of the poor, and so on. It’s not a necessary condition – and certainly, the people on the Supreme Court are intelligent enough to figure most of these things out without direct, personal life experience. But as long as a judge’s background has some effect on what they sympathize with and accept as valid, it seems like a good idea to form a court with many different backgrounds instead of eight or nine identical ones.

Additionally, after some reflection, I’ve come to realize some truth in what Sotomayor said about richness of experience. On face, it may sound preposterous, but it probably is easier as a Latina woman to understand “white culture” than it is for a white person to understand “Hispanic culture.” (In quotes because I realize those phrases are overly generalized. Bear with me.) Most of the characters and families in popular TV shows are white. Adhesive bandages and stage makeup labeled “flesh-toned” are typically found in light, peachy shades. Black children choose to play with white dolls, stating that they look prettier and nicer, even as they choose the black doll as the one which is most like themselves. The white experience is normalized and taught to non-white Americans, while the reverse is not the case. At the very least, I think we can agree that Sotomayor’s experiences at Princeton and at Yale Law give her an understanding of white aristocracy that’s customary for Supreme Court nominees, supplemental to and not displacing her upbringing in the Bronx housing projects.

Of course, there is a great deal to be said about Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy and previous rulings, but I’ll leave that for another time. It is these statements about being a “wise Latina woman” that seem to have sparked the most controversy, so I think it’s worth noting: when you delve a little deeper into the point she’s really making, it’s hard not to find at least a kernel of truth.