The Blog and the Shower

Finally, and not too surprisingly, Judge Sonia Sotomayor was endorsed by the Senate Judiciary Committee today, but only after a series of hearings that dwelled on one of the worse kinds of identity politics–the kind that assumes that being white, (often) male, urban/suburban, and upper/middle class is “normal,” and the only ones who have an identity are those who deviate from this norm.

Two weeks ago, when I saw this New York Times headline last week–”Sotomayor Says Identity Won’t Distort Decisions.“–I remembered the time that a friend of mine in college suggested that it might be progressive to form a White Studies department at our university, so that we would be forced to acknowledge that white culture–or more precisely, middle class, Western culture– is not a sort of neutral slate against which all other cultures should be viewed, but one culture among many in which none take precedence over others or be considered the measure of their peers.

The New York Times article began:

Republican senators sparred with Judge Sonia Sotomayor
on Tuesday over racial bias, judicial activism and temperament as she
presented herself as a reliable follower of precedent rather than a
jurist shaped by gender and ethnicity, as some of her past speeches
suggested.

That’s what she said in the hearings; but as the New York Times and some of her dectractors quoted, she also said in previously in a speech: “I accept that there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

That, too me, seems like the more honest answer.  Of course Judge Sotomayor’s worldview has been influenced by her gender and ethnicity!  Just like all of the rest of us, and just like the worldview of the other Supreme Court Justices, and the Senators
questioning her–except in their case, it’s more likely to have been the fact of being male and white in a patriarchal and racist society that influenced them.  This perspective, however, goes unacknowledged and perhaps unnoticed, such that when it is demanded that she move away from any personal influences on her thinking by her status as a woman and a Latina, what is really being asked is that she adopt the position of the silent majority, which apparently is not actually a perspective influenced by personal experiences, but rather a sort of neutral standpoint from which to view the world.

The fact that one hails from a dominant culture that determines, among other things, what seems logical and what doesn’t, shouldn’t be confused with having an objective point of view, if such a thing is even possible.  Working from a powerful position within a given system carries its own unique perspective, and it’s one that should be acknowledged and examined as well.