Commentary: Judge Sotomayor is not a racist

[IndianaGreen]

Commentary: Judge Sotomayor is not a racist

By Sherrilyn A. Ifill

The offending section of the speech is this: "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." This passage inspired Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives and potential 2012 presidential candidate, to call Judge Sotomayor "a Latina racist."

To lift one statement out of Judge Sotomayor's eight-page speech without examining the context and substance of her remarks, is an example of the kind of shoddy character assassination that I suspect will dominate this judicial confirmation process.

Judge Sotomayor's speech is, in fact, an excellent meditation on how the experiences of judges might affect how they approach aspects of judicial decision-making. It explores the important, and too-little examined reality that judicial deliberations can be affected by a judge's background, perspective and experience.

In the next sentence immediately following the passage above, Judge Sotomayor says, "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."

Could she have been referring to Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case in which Justice Holmes -- widely regarded as perhaps the most brilliant justice in the Supreme Court's history -- upheld the state's plan to sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old white woman, who was accused of being congenitally retarded. Buck's main crime seems to have been the fact that she'd had a child out of wedlock.

In any case, Justice Holmes upheld the sterilization order, emphatically and coldly stating, "three generations of imbeciles is enough." Does anyone seriously believe that a woman, and especially a woman of color "with the richness of her experiences" would not have "reach a better conclusion " than that adopted by Justice Holmes in 1927?

In fact Buck v. Bell is the perfect example of how a "wise old (white) man" got it wrong in a way that a woman judge or a racial minority most likely would not.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/28/ifill.sotomayor/index.html

[MadMaddie]

1. Facts never got in the way of Repuglicans.

Performing analysis of an entire speech is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much work for them too.

[sam sarrha]

2. they just read the script the Fascist Corporatist's give them.. no shame, no ethics, no guts

[bemildred]

3. I just gottta say that Newt calling anybody a racist is pretty funny. nt