Sotomayor’s Critics
I find myself compelled to keep writing about this subject. The continuing objections to Sonia Sotomayor as a racist and practitioner of identity politics simply baffle me. Her record on discrimination cases alone seems to show that the latter charge is bogus, and the other charge is so absurd that I can’t believe it continues to circulate. As if to show just how absurd the charge of racism is in this case, Jeffrey Lord sums up his view with a statement that I think can only be called crazy:
Were this nomination a Hollywood script it would be pitched as Birth of a Nation meets the Weather Underground.
Conservatives write things like this, and then they wonder why minorities flee from them in droves. What inspires someone to liken the judicial nomination of a rather boring, conventional center-left Puerto Rican judge to a film that glorifies the KKK and a modern domestic terrorist organization? Given Lord’s past writings, obsessive anti-racism run amok seems to be the answer here, but while he may be one of the most vocal Lord is hardly alone. During this entire debate, we are hearing endlessly about the importance of merit and why merit must never be outweighed by identity considerations. All right. We are reminded again and again of the hope that everyone will be judged by character and not by race. That sounds reasonable. So why is it that Sotomayor’s critics seem to be going out of their way to ignore her merits and her achievements and have been fixating on questions of identity and identity politics to the exclusion of almost everything else? Perhaps deep within the cocoon, articles that earnestly claim that Limbaugh and Martin Luther King are fighting the same fight seem credible, but what everyone else sees is little more than a collective panic that an Hispanic has been appointed to the Supreme Court. Her critics have been railing against her allegedly faulty judgment, but they have managed to make their arguments so poorly that it is the soundness of their judgment that most people are bound to question.
No less remarkable are the descriptions her critics offer about her. According to Shelby Steele, who writes on almost nothing except for subjects related to race, she is “race-obsessed.” Andrew chimes in and refers, apparently without any irony, to the “constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity” and goes on to say that “the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation.” What evidence do we have that her consciousness of her identity is either constant or oppressive, or for that matter where is the evidence that she “harps on it” aggressively or otherwise? She talks about it, she refers to it, she takes pride in it, she thinks that it matters–this is not obsession or aggression.
By Sullivan’s standard, it would be very difficult to read his blog on the day of some gay marriage ballot or court decision, and not come to the conclusion that he is “obsessed” with his sexuality, or his semi-daily posting about his beard “obsession.”
Reading Lord’s previous column, with his four-page litany of the depredations he has received at the hands of southern white racists, and how this has forever sensitized him to racism, one can only wonder if it was him or MoDo that came up with the line about young bucks buying steaks with food stamps…
I think a collective snicker went around the internet when Sullivan made his comment.
I, too, am astonished at the fixation on Sotomayor. Remember the Edgar Allen Poe story “The Imp Of The Perverse” in which the narrator is psychologically compelled to do that which is clearly against his self-interest? At the rate the GOP is going, the Democrats will hold the Hispanic community for 50 years….I doubt that this is even playing well in Miami.
Other than the constant complaints about the dull, conservatively decided _Ricci_ case I have seen very little discussion of Judge Sotomayor’s considerable paper trail. That, in itself, lets one know that there ain’t much ammo to be found there.
Ta-Nehisii Coates had a nice post today in which he pointed out that the GOP often seems more obsessed with “victimology” than they do with “victimhood”.
Moreover, when we get to the actual confirmation hearings Sotomayor is going to be so geared up for this line of questioning that she will absolutely rend her inquisitors from stem to stern (hopefully completely disembowling the reliably fatuous Lindsey Graham).
P.S. -
When she does annhilate aforementioned inquisitors, how long do you think it will take for someone to accuse her of “playing the race card”.
I have a hard time believing that race is really what conservatives are trying to get at in their criticisms – I think James Poulos is right that the primary issue here is whether Sotomayor will be an advocate of Rortyan “social hope” on the Supreme Court. Conservatives tend not to read Rorty so the closest they can get to critique of the “we liberal/ironist” team-mentality of progressives is race consciousness. Even her harshest critics don’t seem to be too interested in, say, the difference between blacks and Latinos, but in the desire for liberals to interpret legal change as “good” rather than “correct” – or, as Poulos has mentioned, to make law into social ethics.
Maybe you’ve addressed this alread, Daniel, but it seems that your (laudable) effort to ridicule the mainstream conservative response actually further obscures the underlying issue.
Well, Poulos might also be right in suggesting that her critics on the right are just doing good fundraising, and that a lot of this “racism” talk isn’t in completely good faith. There’s a lot of mud in the water, with people offering genuine criticism, which might be valid, and then two kinds of people alleging racism, the ones who really believe it and the ones trying to drive traffic and megadittos.
I admit, as someone to whom leftism is dear, but dearer still is a certain level of intellectual honesty, this phenomenon makes it very difficult to engage with mainstream conservative writers… Of course, from their perspective, arguing about Rortyan “social hope” would require the speaker to actually posit a positive belief, and not simply prove that liberals are hypocrites, which for most of them is sufficient to achieve their objective. Arguing about legal change being “good” versus “correct” would also be liable to start all kinds of fights between different conservative factions (is a ban on abortion “good” or merely “correct” or not?), so many conservatives have reasons to tiptoe around this issue, which also splits a lot of liberals too.
It might also be added, when conservatives actually get out a chisel and start working on the tough philosophical questions, they get a bunch of stoopid libruls posting in their comments section agreeing with them, and this carries its own liabilities. o_O
I caught Rush one day last week. This bit of deep, unintentional irony is another example of the foolishness you’re talking about.
In the interests of intellectual honesty, I confused Maureen Dowd with Peggy Noonan in the first comment. There, now it almost makes sense.
A bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.
But you must have a grand battle – something like what is going on between Detroit and Pittsburgh in their rinks – to cover the fact that there are NO issues being discussed, at least none of importance (did anyone else notice here hair style?).
Gingrich has noted Obama has failed, and I forget which democrats said the same of Bush an equal length into his term, and Clinton before that…
Nothing substantial changes. And it won’t until something like the Ron Paul revolution matures.
There may be reasons Sotomayor ought to be confirmed, or not confirmed, but instead we get noise, and even the meta-discussion on the noise like here is too busy to analyze things, not that anyone would pay attention to it, but it might limit what might otherwise be surprises to each side.
Although it looks to me like Sotomayor is probably not the worst candidate Obama could have picked, I still think she is a racist. There’s a very big difference between “celebrating” one’s heritage and deeming it superior to others, especially in the realm of justice, in which “blindness” is (was) the ideal. Why are so many of you defending this?
I don’t want to live in a country where I’m not permitted to say that my Norwegian (or my Minnesotan, or my Protestant) heritage gives me certain positive attributes other people might not have.
I don’t see anything attractive about a civil society where people are stigmatized for talking about being proud of their background. For me though, as I’ve probably overstated, my understanding of the issue hinges on my belief that “Latino” isn’t really a “race,” but I suppose there’s a lot of disagreement on that. As long as everyone is being generally positive and we all have humility about our failings, I don’t see the problem. It’s when you make people drink at the water fountain X because their skin is darker than a grocery bag that this becomes a problem, and when Sonia Sotomayor proposes Mestizo jury nullification, then I’ll be against her. But that’s not even remotely on the table.
I wouldn’t presume to put words in the crunchy con’s mouth, but I would venture that a good conservative reading of the issue would focus on how culture influences the individual, and how there can be good things and bad things about a culture, and if you don’t permit people to extoll the virtues of their culture, you can’t reasonably engage in debate about the negative aspects of their culture. If Sotomayor wants to talk about the virtues of being a “wise latina,” then she should consider it fair to hear criticisms of her participation in La Raza and other cultural organizations, etc. I don’t necessarily agree with this reading, but it seems much more honest to me than what we have been hearing from the Right on this.
I will be very disappointed if one of the Republicans in the hearing doesn’t ask her how being “a wise latina” has helped her in judging. The answer will be very enlightening, particularly if she repudiates her previous statement. Of course, all of this smoke that the pundits are throwing up has almost guaranteed that the lucky senator who asks this question will be branded a racist, because the conservatives making these arguments have happily conflated race with heritage in order to score their points.
Sullivan is one of those people that is routinely wrong in the moral realm, just slightly behind the times in politics and just slightly ahead of the current zeitgeist.
He can defend the same-sex movement without aknowledging the hard work done by the women’s rights movement, much of the results of which are enjoyed by the gay community. He can publicly recognize the folly of the Iraqi adventure (although I doubt his sincerity), but can simultaneously endorse the aggravation of any other intervention. He can espouse the mantra of “Change” just early enough to be hip, but he cannot allow himself to get on board with any of the policies that go along with it.
He’s a very smart and well-versed poseur, but his professed opinions do offer a service; one should always opposed whatever it is that Sullivan is hocking in order to be both well-respected and morally-secure.
In a nutshell: They are having a hard time coming with polarizing issues attacks like abortion, gay marriage or immigration[1].
I read a couple of days ago 5 questions that Republicans should ask Judge Sotomayor (no, not Newt’s 5 rehash tragedy), and none were on highly visible, highly polarizing issues[2]. They were on important, current issues and on the Constitution, but nothing that they fuel the mobs.
@Hal Jedoux: You don’t get the point of this post. You are acting exactly how Larison is saying that conservatives shouldn’t, by attacking the person instead of the work. If any of these accusations had any base, it would have been reflected on her work.
Blindness is certainly the ideal, but judges has been, to be optimistic, un-blind at times. If blind justice was an attainable attribute, we wouldn’t have an appeals court, and much less a Supreme Court.
Also, read the whole address. I’ll make it easy to you to find: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/05/26_sotomayor.shtml
[1] Thankfully, the pundits haven’t used this issue. The bucket of worms they’d be opening is not worth touching with a 20 yard stick.
[2] Sorry for the vagueness, but I’m writing from a different computer from where I read it.
Again – I don’t see race as the primary issue of the ‘wise Latina’ comment. That you are Norwegian is part of the reason why (I am 1/4 by the way – I was just in a Norwegian clothing shop in Alaska last week). No one cares about that fine of distinction in this context. White, black, and Latina are the relevant factors when the predicate involves the legal context of the word ‘better’ (as in better decision). The racial issue might sort of factor in when we consider that ‘Latina’ could be replaced with pretty much anything other than ‘white’ and still make political sense.
Which is why I sort of don’t understand the cultural–even decentralized–justification Daniel is providing here, as if this is only the question of the expression of appreciation for one’s heritage (which might be the issue if we were using terms like Norwegian, Mexican, or even Kansan). I bring up Rorty because he constantly uses the 1st person plural and that ‘we’ has nothing to do with the kind of community that Daniel has been referring to in his Sotomayor posts. And it has everything to do with what Sotomayor calls ‘landscape.’
I could very well be wrong. But, at the very least, the legal philosophy involved is not ‘bizarre.’ One can plausibly argue that in this situation it is exactly Sotomayor (and Obama) that are the universalists.
Too many conservatives seem to fall prey to the very identity politics they decry when it comes to race. The self-identify with a conservatism that was, by and large, on the wrong side of the civil rights movement and are hypersensitive to the point of irrationality on questions of race. Sometimes it’s as though they go out of their way to say racially insensitive things to paradoxically prove their non-racist credentials. “A real racist would never dare say something like this, so if I say it that means I must not be a racist.”
Mike
A semi-relevant quotation from Deborah Rhode’s Slate article (link below) on how gender influences the court:
Relevant in the sense that the issue here should not be “identity politics” but the unapologetic “skew to the political left.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2220220/pagenum/all/#p2
My strongest objection to Sotomayor is the eminent domain issue. It seems eminent domain doesn’t excite many people, at least until it’s their property in the bulldozers’ path.
It’s probably smart for conservative attack dogs to go after Sotomayor on ‘affirmative action’ type issues. Affirmative action is very unpopular with white Americans, who are still a big part of the electorate.
Political junkies tend to forget that most swing voters aren’t political junkies. That applies to Latinos as much as any other group, I would think.
In 2010 I expect some Democratic candidates will try to hang Rush Limbaugh around the necks of their opponents, as Obama did with McCain. But that example shows that Rush was already unpopular with Latinos. And the other attack dogs are under the radar. I’ve never heard of this Jeffrey Lord person before.
I’m reminded of the huge fuss Hillary supporters made over the Michigan and Florida primaries. If Obama didn’t do as they said, he was handing both states to the Republicans. But in November Obama won both states, and the primary controversy wasn’t even mentioned. Literally, I didn’t see a single mention, on TV or the internet.
“My strongest objection to Sotomayor is the eminent domain issue.”
Absolutely. Her record on this is one of the worst things I have seen reported about her rulings.
This seems topical enough to dredge up now that the Ricci case has come back from the SCOTUS.
I have two questions for Daniel: 1. Don’t you suppose that pushback against the “Sotomayor is racist” argument is unnecessarily narrow and a distraction given all the issues that are brought to the forefront with this nomination, including but not limited to the Ricci case?
2. At what point should the GOP and the mainstream Right fight against the “smelly orthodoxies” of diversity or affirmative action if not here?
The Ricci case is a boring case, until the SCOTUS resolution. There was a SCOTUS precedence in place since 1971, which is what Judge Sotomayor and the other 3 judges based their opinion. In that sense, they all elected to follow precedence instead of revoking the SCOTUS.
What the opinion written by Justice Kennedy establishes is new law on how to handle these situations.
As for your questions:
1) Most Republicans are doing their best work to stay out of the real (albeit non-polarizing) issues (like the eminent domain issue). Many are betting on the Ricci case being it, but it might turn out to be not polarizing enough.
Democrats have been happy to stay out of the real issues to keep ammo out of the Republicans hands.
2) Fighting against diversity and/or Affirmative Action is a mistake. I have two reasons for it:
a) When selecting a group, you select what you need, not who’s best. Going for a sports analogy, if you are selecting players for your (established) team, you need to assess the team weaknesses and select the best player to counter that weakness. Many times it might be the best player available, but what if it isn’t? What if the best player available is a catcher, a position you already have a pretty good player and your weakness is in first base? Selecting the best player always will yield (in this example) a team with two excellent catchers competing for the same spot and no one covering adequately first base[0].
b) Especially on decision making groups, you need different perspectives. Different perspectives bring new questions, which might bring new light, solutions and problems. In several teams I’ve been involved with this type of dynamic, I’ve always appreciate those who think different, and work hard to question my assumptions.
Some time ago, I was asked to check on why some custom made software we made for an office wasn’t working very well. I talked with several users and most (shyly) nitpicked a couple of things, and I saw other issues, but nothing troubling. My surprise came when I opened the door to talk with the last person. As I entered to explain why I was there, he was screaming and cursing at the computer on how the software was useless for him. Among the curses and screams, I was able to pick up why the software wasn’t working: it actually worked if you understood the software, but a typical user couldn’t grasp it easily. Had we had someone outspoken, with the day to day experiences of the typical worker from this office, to point out these faults on the early days, they wouldn’t had to put up to several years of a (for them) suboptimal software[1].
Would this work for the Supreme Court? Of course! You need people with diverse backgrounds to challenge each other, and they (collectively) will arrive to a better conclusion than a group of similar backgrounds will. You don’t stop at gender and race diversity, but also all sort of life experiences diversity.
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[0] Before someone says “then one of the catchers should play first base!”: It’s possible, but dangerous, especially if the catcher-turned-into-first baseman wants to remain a catcher.
[1] Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. We were able to adapt (and expand) the software to become a central piece of their work, not something they had to fight with.
I knew I was forgetting something on the second question.
c) Especially when higher positions are truly diverse, it keeps everyone in check. When a workplace is completely filled with one race, it’s easier for despicable acts to pass un-noted. Police brutality (especially against one race) is an easy example. Cases like Rodney King’s wouldn’t have gone to trial because few, if any, whites would have gone to denounce their own[2].
But the reverse also happens. By having a “token” minority[3], it’s harder to objectively criticize without getting frantic accusations of discrimination. During university, the capstone course required a group project, and when we assembled the group, it ended up being 3 guys and 1 female. The course professor insisted on teams to be either all females, all males or 2 males/2females. But I had worked with them previously (and separately), so I knew they were good. To make the long story short, the female wasn’t working on par on this project, and then tries to do a month of work on 3 days. On the last day, we’ve been working for several hours without stop before I decide to take a quick bathroom break to get ready for the final presentation. Upon my return, I saw our project burned down[4].
Sometime later that day[5], I came to talk to her about her performance and actions and she quickly counters that the other 2 guys where being “mean” to her because they weren’t letting her do her work. Talking privately with them, they had objections on most of her work because it was untested and rushed, something I could attest to. However, I felt that I was on a “damn if you do, damn if you don’t position”: I couldn’t openly criticize her, because she could allege we were discriminating against her, but I couldn’t let her continue to destroy what was left of our project.
Upon much reflection, had we followed the professor’s advice, a second female would have had a neutralizing effect on our criticism towards her. A bonus, if the other female had brought her the complains, she couldn’t allege gender discrimination as strongly.
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[2] The feeling of betraying your own is not limited to white people, but in all overwhelming situations.
[3] By token, I mean only, or one of very few. Not to diminish their capability.
[4] Not figuratively. Literally the project was burned down.
[5] I needed to vent off and approach everything as objectively as possible.