“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 this life.” So spoke Judge Sonia Sotomayor back in 2001.
Now White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is suggesting that she misspoke. That’s not credible. She was speaking from a prepared text which was published as a law review article. She had every chance to choose her words carefully, and her educational credentials and her written judicial opinions both suggest strongly that she is fully capable of writing exactly what she means.
Some suggested questions for Judge Sotomayor:
Would you hope that a wise African-American male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a Latina woman who hasn’t lived this life?
Would you hope that a wise Asian-American of whatever gender would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latino man who hasn’t lived this life?
Would you hope that a wise white American female with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than an African-American male who hasn’t lived this life?
Would you hope that a Latina woman of Puerto Rican descent out of the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a Latina woman of Mexican descent? Etc.
In other words, what’s the hierarchy here? Which groups’ experiences have more richness than others? If you hope that a Latina woman would reach a better conclusion than a white male, where do people in the other racial and ethnic categories into which Americans have been sorted in recent decades rank vis a vis one another?
Or do you now believe, contrary to the clear implication of your carefully chosen words in 2001, that “divvying us up by race,” is, in Chief Justice Roberts’s words, “a sordid business”?
