There Is No Evidence That Sotomayor's Infamous Racist Statement Was A Mere Bad Choice Of Words
Source: http://www.thedenenbergreport.org/article.php?index=1527
If President Obama would announce that 2+2=6, the mainstream media would dutifully report that, and probably praise the rare insight of the Messiah and use this as evidence of his bringing hope and change. By like token, when the Obama administration claims that Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s now famous and blatantly racist statement is merely a product of bad word choice (or some other equally incredible explanation), the mainstream media would salute and swallow an obvious lie whole.
You know what I’m talking about, I presume. In a lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) in 2001, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
The White House immediately tried to explain that away, with shifting explanations as their attempts to make 2+2=6 didn’t fly. First, they said don’t judge a career by a single sentence. After three days of failure to sell that approach, it was that she misspoke or just used poor choice of words. That failed to, and more recently she is being victimized by those who would take her words out of context. (That’s an Obama favorite. You’ll recall when the racist and bigot Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright had to be explained away, it was all about judging him from a few snippets out of context (rather than all of his racist, bigoted, anti-American sermons).
THE CONTEXT IN THE PARAGRAPH MAKES RACISM CLEAR.
Let me explain why none of those explanations fly. If you read the whole speech, it is all about how being a Latina or a minority makes a difference in judging. But when you read even a few sentences around the blatant racism, it is crystal clear what she meant. Here’s that sentence with a little more context:
“Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and a 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 that 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.” It is quite clear she’s saying the Latina woman will reach a better conclusion, not a different conclusion.
The context reinforces the clear meaning. President Obama claims she was just trying to make the point that life experience may influence the judging process. But she was setting up the conclusion with a “wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience” to suggest what is concluded – a better conclusion than a white male. Notice he is not a “wise” white male and his experience, however rich, is totally discounted in this logic.
CONTEXT OF WHOLE SPEECH MAKES RACISM CLEAR.
Then if you read the whole speech, it is all about how gender and race make a difference in judging, just as that infamous statement indicates. For example, she writes, “I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.” She asserts that “experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences” may make a difference in judging. She concedes even “nine white men” can understand “the values and needs of a people from a different group.” But she then says that takes time and effort. And some will not take the time and effort. Others simply have experiences that limit their ability to understand others. So, she concludes, “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 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.” Don’t you think it is time to explain those judging differences based on gender and Latina heritage?
When you read the language of the speech, such as that just quoted, and the rest of the speech, you conclude that Sotomayor thinks for a just result, each group would have to be judged by their own, as others simply do not, will not, could not, or are slow to understand the “experience of others.” She’s making the case for identity politics and the Balkanization of the Court. We’d have to have a specially impaneled Supreme Court for each case, to make sure that the justices understood the litigants involved. This ridiculous result perhaps suggests that the Sotomayor analysis is on the ridiculous side. It shows the folly of identity politics and appointments based on race, gender, religion, etc.
SOTOMAYOR REJECTS NOTION OF THE IMPARTIAL JUDGE.
Judge Sotomayor also rejects the notion of the neutral and impartial judge. In Sotomayor’s view, the judge’s decision-making process is overwhelmed by race, gender, experience, and other variables. In the speech, she writes,
“The aspiration of impartiality is just that – it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the judging process.”
To prove her point, she cites a Minnesota case in which three women in the majority agreed to grant a protective order against a father’s visitation rights when the father abused his child. Two men dissented. This case, in Sotomayor’s view, apparently proves that women make the right decisions and men the wrong decisions. This great scholar doesn’t give the citation of the case (for the benefit of those who want to check her reasoning), and we must presume that there was no explanation to the judging other than gender. I would hope her legal opinions evidence better scholarship and better logic than that.
I think Ms. Sotomayor doesn’t understand what the judicial process is all about. At its core is impartiality. That’s what judges are sworn to do and trained to do. Every judge in every case may not perfectly succeed. But Judge Sotomayor produces no evidence to indicate that the impartial and neutral judge is merely a fictional construct. Such judges and judging are what runs the system and justifies its power and respect. And the infamous statement and the whole speech suggest her judicial philosophy is heavily infected by a failure to follow a philosophy of impartial judging and a dedication to identity politics and a surrender to a judicial process focused on race and gender.
FURTHER PROOF THE RACIST STATEMENT WAS NO “POOR WORD CHOICE.”
The mainstream media paint Obama’s Supreme Court nomination as a great legal mind, with Obama himself saying “her judicial craftsmanship and precision in the law” will produce great results on the court. So you wonder why we can’t assume she says what she means and means what she says.
I presume you know where I’m going. Obama and an army of Democrats are trying to explain her now infamous statement. I think that this great legal mind said exactly what she meant, and it is hard to imagine that she merely tried to say, in Obama’s own words, “That breadth of experience, that knowledge of how the world works, is part of what we want for a justice who’s going to be effective.” This is got to be one of Obama’s biggest lies since his other whopper when he claimed that he really didn’t know what Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright was all about, even after attending his church for 20 years and closely associating with him in many ways.
You can also conclude Sotomayor meant exactly what she said, when you consider the setting of the statement. It was not an off-the-cuff comment or some extemporaneous speech. This was a formal lecture prepared in advance and delivered at a major university. These lectures are on the record and are typically published. The Sotomayor speech was the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture and was published in the La Raza Law Journal.
A lecture of this kind is carefully prepared from a written text for future publication and is about as far as you can get from off-the-cuff. Every word and sentence is typically carefully considered. So the notion of poor word choice or miscommunication is much harder to accept as an explanation of pure racism. And you wonder if she “misspoke,” why she didn’t correct the text after delivery and prior to publication. No, I’m afraid that speech is exactly what Sotomayor believes.
ANOTHER QUESTIONABLE BIT OF ANALYSIS FROM SOTMAYOR.
There are other troubling statements in the speech. Consider this one:
“I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage, but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies, and prejudices are appropriate.” Since when are prejudices (judgments before the fact) appropriate in a judicial opinion?
SOTOMAYOR’S RACISM AND IDENTIFY POLITICS AND HER DECISIONS.
The Firefighter’s case out of New Haven suggests that her expressed judicial theories may explain some of her judicial decisions. In the Firefighers case she joined a majority that gave short shrift to white firemen and one Hispanic fireman denied promotion because no blacks passed the qualifying test. This decision has come under heavy criticism, not just because it seems to justify reverse discrimination against whites. But the process that Sotomayor was part of looks like an attempt to bury the case and permit the reverse discrimination. The decision did not consider the critically important constitutional issues and dismissed them without reasons. That is contrary to the processes usually followed in this kind of important case, where a detailed explanation and opinion would be in order.
This isn’t the only off-the-wall decision that needs explanation. There is also Sotomayor’s decision on the Second Amendment, denying any right under state law to keep and bear arms.
WHY WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATIONS FALL FLAT.
There’s something quite fishy about the Obama explanation and that of his spokesman, Robert Gibbs. Gibbs tried to explain it as poor word choice. Neither one of them indicated that they had talked to Sotomayor, Obama suggesting we are supposed to believe him on faith and Gibbs claiming he talked to people who talked to Sotomayor. Neither one could explain why they didn’t just talk to Sotomayor and let her explain the statement. I can only imagine she needed more time to construct a credible explanation.
There’s something else that is quite fishy about the Obama/Gibbs attempt to explain away what is clearly an outrageous racist remark. The White House story has been changing. The White House first tried to explain the comment away by saying critics should not dwell on one sentence from a speech. This seems to admit this is what she said and this is what she meant. But after pumping that story for three days, they shifted to the “choice-of-words” theory and have recently latched on to the out-of-context excuse. When all that doesn’t fly, I’m sure they’ll have a third equally incredible explanation…perhaps specially prepared for the confirmation hearing. If you’re telling the truth, it doesn’t keep changing every third day.
OBAMA’S VIEW OF ALL THIS.
President Obama dismisses all the Sotomayor criticism as “nonsense.” The White House has also suggested that it is somehow off base even to criticize Sotomayor. Of course, this is all from the President and the new White House that is supposed to represent post-racial politics. But this appointment suggests that Obama and his appointee are deep into identity politics and are playing the race card. You should recall that Obama played the race card on more than one occasion during the campaign, and this appointment suggests he will keep playing it. This all helps show Obama knew that the Sotomayor appointment would deliver what he was after in Supreme Court judging – he wants judges who follow empathy and their feelings rather than the Constitution and the intent of the Founders.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, professor at the Wharton School, and Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a board member of the Center for Safe Medication Use. He is an adjunct professor of insurance and information science and technology at Cabrini College. You can write Herb at POB 7301,St. Davids, PA e-mail him at hdenenberg@aol.com or reach him at his two Web sites: thedenenbergreport.org or denenbergsdump.org
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