What is a racist?
30 May 2009
by
lolife
Filed under
Politics
There is a lot of attention being given to this quote by Sonia Sotomayor:
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.
Do you think this is a racist quote? What is your definition of racist?
As usual, there is what she said and then 9 million interpretations of what she said. If you take her literally at her word, you’d take the meaning to mean “a Latina women has better judgment than a white male”. If you take the most unflattering and literal opinion, I do think you could call that a racist statement and I do think we would call a white male who said the opposite a racist.
But I think such an interpretation is wrong and out of context. She is talking about people who struggle as minorities compared to people in the majority who don’t face challenges related to racism or what I could call “economic racism” — considering certain people to be worthy of lower positions in the social hierarchy. I think people who have struggled economically and people who have faced the adversity of racism may very well have better judgment than someone lucky enough to have not faced those challenges.
Do I think she is a racist? Of course not.
30 May 2009 @ 6:46 pm
I don’t think it’s a racist comment. I don’t know her so I have no idea whether she’s a racist. But I do find it to be a smug comment. I certainly don’t find the attention being paid to it to be unwarranted. She is a judge, she knows now and knew then the importance of her written and spoken word. Obama’s backtracking from it is unseemly, I don’t think she was unaware of the implications of what she was saying.
Someone who has faced the adversity of racism may very well have better or or may very well have worse judgement. There are certainly victims of racism whose ability to be objective is completely tainted, witness the OJ trial. I don’t mean to imply Sotomayor is such a person. As I stated in my blog post on the topic, my concern is whether or not she’ll be able to live up to the oath she will have to take. Comments she’s made, including the one you cite, make me skeptical. But I’m open to being shown that such skepticism is unwarranted.