I think that when she’s appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is
Considering that he nominated someone who “hopes” that “Latina women” make better judges than “white males,” I’m a little curious about what he considers “nonsense.” Because what she said struck me as, plainly, nonsense. For him to call criticism of her “nonsense” makes me wonder whether he agrees with what she said.
Here are three paragraphs from a speech Judge Sottomayor gave in 2002. The last sentence of the first paragraph has been quoted numerous times, and I presumed that if I read the sentence in context, it would make more sense. I’m not sure it does:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. 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.
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.
What on earth does she mean by that sentence? 1. Why is there a presumption that “a white male” has less “rich” experiences than a “Latina woman”? 2. Even if she believed it were true that “Latina women” made better judges than “white males” (and should we be elevating people who say such things?), why would she “hope” it were true? I sincerely hope this gets explained during the confirmation hearing, and that it was nothing more than an inappropriate joke.
That hope aside, even though in the speech she makes a couple of statements along the lines of trying not to let her identity affect her judging, the speech as a whole gives the impression that she revels in how her identity shapes her judgement. Like a puppy rolling around in the grass. I think this nomination is a bad regression in the course of American race relations. I hope Justice Sottomayor is a little less obsessed with herself and her identity than is Judge Sottomayor.
Every once in a while numbers leak out from universities showing the reality of racial preferences. Here’s some numbers from Duke. This one is super special, because it doesn’t just show the differing criteria for admitted students, it shows the different GPAs once the students are admitted. There’s half a point of GPA between Asians/whites and blacks.
The actual paper seems to cost $5, which is about $5 more than I’m willing to pay for an academic paper. It seems to be making the point, which anyone in their right mind realizes through common sense (thus college administrators are able to feign ignorance on the subject – we presume they have neither a right mind nor common sense), that admitted students with inferior credentials tend to do less well.
Apollo posted this at 3:10 PM EDT on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 as Edjamacation, Race
Janeane Garofalo calls all TEA protestors racist, Olberman agrees with her. You can’t make this shit up people.
Regardless of what you think about these protests I think we can all agree that this has nothing to do with race. Then again it has been predicted on this blog (and elsewhere myriad times) that anyone disagreeing with Obama would become a defacto racist.
Interestingly enough when it was the other side protesting, Ms. Garofalo seemed to think that free speach and reasoned dissent was the hight of patriotism and democratic discourse.
What a bloody hypocrite.
Jamie posted this at 12:36 PM EDT on Monday, April 20th, 2009 as CHANGE!, Race
Why is it racist to imply that an Irishman likes fried chicken? Of course, I don’t really get why fried chicken is a racial issue at all. Perhaps a useful question is: does any group of people not like fried chicken?
Apollo posted this at 12:57 AM EDT on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 as Race
Read this post. Then read this post. What is the word that should be shouted at the end of that response? The only thing I can think of is a specific type of laugh that I can’t spell (”Hurgh hurgh”?).
Apollo posted this at 10:56 PM EDT on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 as Race
The president of Brazil – a leftist, as one could have guessed from this story – blames the current economic mess on “white people with blue eyes.” “I do not know any black or indigenous* bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.”**
A white person like myself – but I’m not blue-eyed, so I’m blameless in the present crisis! – might be called racist for saying that “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers.”*** A white person like myself would almost certainly be called racist for pointing out, “It’s those same white people who, uniquely in human history, created a widespread political and economic philosophy of freedom, which has produced the unprecedented prosperity of the last two hundred years.” But since I’m not a racist like Brazil’s Socialist president, I wouldn’t say such a thing. Perhaps it’s often best, in the name of racial harmony, to not point out certain facts that might be obvious to non-biased observers.
The best bit, though, is Gordon Brown, who responds to this racist shtick with, “I’m not going to attribute blame to any individuals.” Well neither, evidently, is Mr. Silva, who attributed it to a race (or, at least, the blue-eyed subset of a race) phenotype. Pretty nifty that when two socialists stand next to other and one says something blatantly racist, the other doesn’t have to criticize. No enemies on the left, eh Gordo?
*Aren’t white, blue-eyed people indigenous?
**Really, he thinks “black and indigenous” people, whatever that means, are paying for this crisis? That’s ignorant leftist demagoguery. But I’m redundant.
***I might also be called ignorant, and told, “Go to New York and actually meet some bankers.”
Obama is the “that’s a valid point” professor, so he respects equally my anti-abortion point of view, and his pastor’s government-created-AIDS point of view. They’re all valid.
“I think it’s fair to say that if I had been advising my attorney general, we would have used different language,” Mr. Obama said in a mild rebuke from America’s first black president to its first black attorney general.
In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, the president said that despite Mr. Holder’s choice of words, he had a point.
“We’re oftentimes uncomfortable with talking about race until there’s some sort of racial flare-up or conflict,” he said, adding, “We could probably be more constructive in facing up to sort of the painful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination.
Because every point is a valid point in Prof. Obama’s class. Even if you express it in a plainly inaccurate and offensive manner.
And, um, isn’t that last paragraph just a way of rephrasing Holder’s idea? We’re not cowards, we’re “uncomfortable.” And I guess the reason we can’t overcome that discomfort to do what’s right is because . . . because . . . is it because we’re cowards? Isn’t that what we call people who won’t overcome personal discomfort to do what’s right?
Apollo posted this at 4:08 PM EST on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 as Race, That's Not Change!
What sort of racist idiot looks at a cartoon of a man-eating chimp and thinks, “the subtle message was clear*: comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee”? For the love of Pete, Obama famously delegated the writing of the pork bill to Congressional Democrats. The day Americans can’t compare their Congresscritters to monkeys without being called racist is the day a part of this country dies.
If you’ve several too many minutes in your life, read this speech by Eric Holder. While what’s getting attention on the interblogs is his ridiculous assertion that Americans don’t talk about race enough, the real interesting bit to me is that he doesn’t seem to have an interesting thought in his head. That’s fine, so far as it goes, but a government official should not berate his countrymen for not saying anything worthwhile about race, and then himself refuse to say anything worthwhile about race. Instead all we get are the stupid platitudes that are themselves the reason so many don’t want to talk about race. It may amuse some to continually talk about the same damned thing — we’ve come so far, but in some ways were just as segregated as ever; Black History Month is great because it teaches people black history, but in some ways it sucks because it denegrates black history; black people are important too — but some of us got tired of that drivel in grade school.
You want to have a worthwhile discussion about race? Then you offer me a solution to a. the extraordinarily disproportionate amount of crime committed by black men; b. the utterly absurd rate of illegitimacy among blacks; c. the significant underperformance of blacks at nearly all levels of education. And then offer me a solution that can’t be summarized as, “Throw more money at the problem,” or “Punish whitey.” Better yet, when other people propose those solutions (because, plainly, no one in this administration will) stand up and defend them against charges of racism.
In the mean time, I guess we’ll keep being a nation of cowards. But there are worse things in life than being called a coward by a nitwit.
P.S. Holder can berate me until the day I die, but I will never be thankful to Toni Morrison.
Apollo posted this at 5:26 PM EST on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 as Race, That's Not Change!
Bill Bennett and John Cribb have an interesting and optimistic take on the President-Elect’s coming inauguration, especially in terms of what it means for the future of race relations. They make some excellent and rather optimistic points that deserve attention:
Barack Obama did not run as a black candidate. He ran as a Democratic candidate. He ran as a U.S. Senator from Illinois. He ran as a progressive. And, even though he is a black man, he did not run as other black presidential candidates before him — as a black man. He ran as an American. And America, by larger margins than in recent elections, voted for him.
To be sure, we did not accept Barack Obama’s political prescriptions or platform, but — like so many other Americans who voted for John McCain — race was not the issue for our opposition. Nor was it the issue in the decisions of tens of millions of Americans who voted for Barack Obama. Having moved beyond a politics or candidacy based on race, a lot of lessons were taught on November 4th of last year; they will be taught again and amplified on January 20th of this year.
The election of Barack Obama confirms a new self-evident truth: that there is no ceiling to achievement in America based on race. Yes, of course, there is still racism in America. But there are no more viable excuses based simply on race. A black man or woman can become President in America — or anything else he or she wants to be. The recipe, as it largely was for Barack Obama, is to take a serious education seriously, to work hard, and to maintain a strong family ethic. The message to non-black America is that the Huxtables are not just a fictional drama or sitcom of the past; a version of the Huxtables is now about to run Washington with the paterfamilias leading the free world. A successful, upper-middle-class black family now serves as a role model for the success of the rest of black America and the rest of non-black America, too.
However, their recollection of the Rev. Wright Affair is so weak that I can only describe it as praising with faint damnation:
Then came the videos and audio of Barack Obama’s pastor and friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, broadcasting a racially divisive and un-American creed that cast even greater doubt on an Obama candidacy. Senator Obama reassured many that Wright’s view of America was not his view, saying what so many of us truly believed in our hearts and minds. Despite the ranting and raving of later-day racialists and those who still had their doubts about the meaning of our nation’s founding, Barack Obama said that the U.S. “Constitution […] had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law,” that it was “a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.”
Quite right. But when Barack Obama’s pastor refused to take the hint — or lesson — from his pupil and candidate, he ultimately had to be cast aside, as Barack Obama full-throatedly denounced Reverend Wright and ultimately quit his church. The days of doubt about America’s commitment to equality and liberty, for Obama and, happily, so many Americans who wanted to move beyond racial categorization and reference, had passed. Professor Harry Jaffa put it this way, reminding us: “Lincoln at Gettysburg said that the nation, at its birth, had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Earlier, Lincoln had said that the proposition of equality was the ‘central idea’ of the founding, from which all its minor thoughts emanated.” Barack Obama seemed to understand that. And so did the voters.
This is highly misleading on a number of counts. First, it completely side-steps the fact that our president-elect attended a racist church, where crackpot theories about the government engineering AIDs as a bioweapon against African Americans were greeted with credulity. He gave money to this church, was married there, raised his kids there. When Trinity first started to make news, Obama acted surprised even going so far as to say that he didn’t think his church was “that controversial.” And lest we dismiss Wright’s theories as idiosyncratic and not representative of church as a whole, don’t forget that Trinity’s new pastor — thrity-something Otis Moss — refused to disavow the AIDs charge when asked directly about it.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when Wright’s sermons were made public he managed to turn a moment of personal shame — close association with, financial support for, and glowing adultations of an avowed racist — into a meditation on national race relations; though professing disapproval for Wright’s comments, he failed to identify a single one of them specifically. It was only a few weeks later when Wright publically and personally insulted him that the Senator turned on him. Throughout, the entire affair, Obama was deft, clever, smooth, and utterly craven.
I do not beleive that Obama beleives that AIDs is a government conspiracy, nor do I believe he is personally a racist. He was, however, perfectly willing to coddle an outspoken racist up to the moment when it became politically impossible to continue to do so. Whatever the positive effects Obama’s presidency may have on race relations, they must first overcome this shame.
A week from today, Barack Obama will be my president, too, and I hope for all of our sake’s that he is successful, that we do well by him, and that Bennett and Cribb are more accurate in their predictions than I am. But I do not share their optimism.
Tom posted this at 1:26 PM EST on Monday, January 12th, 2009 as Audacity of Hype, Race
It’s long been noted that those who have no qualms at offending Christians frequently have qualms when faced with the prospect of offending Muslims. I think, excluding fear of retaliatory violence, this is merely a subset of the patronizing views of the American left toward the spirituality of non-white peoples.
Does anyone seriously think that Playboy would apologize if a similar image had caused offense in America? I normally hate arguing with hypotheticals, but if Mary appeared on the American edition and some American Christians got cranky, we’d almost certainly get lengthy discussions about the First Amendment, and how important the right to offend is, and how complaining Christians are a threat to free speech. Moreover, we’d get a Saturday Night Live skit about evangelicals being a bunch of prudes. This ritual has been repeated so many times, it’s impossible to not see it happening.
But a darker skinned people has their religion offended, it’s time to apologize!
Apollo posted this at 9:29 PM EST on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 as Faith, Race
White resistance to supporting Democratic presidential candidates is troubling partly because much of that resistance is a lingering reaction to Johnson’s passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
I nail an effigy of LBJ to every cross I burn.
Apollo posted this at 7:19 PM EST on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 as Race
