Confirm This: The Sotomayor Hearings
11:30, Monday: It figures. The Senate's intro to Sonia Sotomayor's testimony is a frank face-off over the issue that's rarely spoken about but has cast a giant shadow over the judicial system, and the Supreme Court in particular, for decades. That issue is race and identity and how it dictates judge's views on legal and social matters. Here's the short answer: of course they do. Race and identity are central to life experiences, and they shape everybody's views in this country, including white folks' views. The problem is we decided some time ago that only people of color are affected by race, and therefore suffer from a built-in "bias" that must be overcome if they are to be full citizens. So it is that while Democrats praised Sotomayor's record and credentials, her up-from-the-ghetto American success story, they assured Republicans and everyone present that she could be also be fair and impartial--that she could overcome the limits of this experience.
Talk about talking out of two sides of your mouth (or ten sides of your neck, as a friend of mine says.) This false hurdle of racial bias is just what Obama had to overcome too; he basically had to assure white voters that he meant them no harm because he is black. Sotomayor has to do the same thing because she's Puerto Rican (which very often is black as well, but that's another blog--let's just say Puerto Rican is one of the more suspect Latino groups for that reason). She has to bear the burden of proof of fairness and impartiality.
Of course that's something every Supreme Court nominee must and should bear during confirmation hearings. But with white nominees the burden has been mostly rhetorical; in this case, it's front and center. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has already denied that Sotomayor has not demonstrated she is "racist," which of course means he thinks she is. It'll be interesting to hear what Sotomayor, inscrutable up to this point, has to say for herself, and perhaps for the rest of us who are nonwhite and and who have borne that burden of proof for a long time.
7:30 Tuesday: Sympathies, opinions and prejudices, oh my! Sen. Jeff Sessions is going at Sotomayor, guns blazing, over her lack of impartiality he thinks is evident in her past remarks about the myth of impartiality, especially as it relates to color and personal background. Sotomayor is the picture of measuredness as she tries to explain to a very huffy Sessions that what she means it's that it's best to acknowledge one's "prejudices" and take them into account as one judges, and not to let them dictate inappropriately. And she states that sometimes those "prejudices" are good things, that they can lead to sound judicial outcomes. Sessions is having none of it. Of course he holds up Sotomayor's appellate ruling on the the New Haven firefighter reverse-discrimination case as proof of her SOP's. Does he hold up anything else, cite any pattern or practice of gross bias over 18 years of her career? Of course not. That would be, well, discriminating.
8:15 Sotomayor has a sense of humor--she laughs heartily in response to a question about the issue of cameras in the courtroom. It's kind of startling, but a big relief. A sense of humor (or of the absurd), especially in the middle of a grilling like this, is a sure sign of sophistication. Or maybe she knows better than us that this is all theatrics--for all the hand-wringing about bias, etc., Sotomayor's judicial record is as middle-of-the-road as it gets. It's not even possible to argue that point. But of course with a nonwhite nominee (or job candidate), critics will zero in on the one event or remark that "outs" the bias we all know is lurking there somewhere, waiting to be deployed...
9:30 Sen. Orrin Hatch, though somewhat less belligerent than Jeff Sessions, also gives Sotomayor the third degree about the New Haven case. At least he brings up other issues, like gun ownership rights (though that's an intricate part of the whole guns-and-God worldview of heartland--read 'white'--America). Sotomayor says later that no one group of people has a monopoly on making good decisions, or bad ones. True. But since the court has been stacked with white males for the vast majority of its history, isn't it time for some other group to test the limits of its mediocrity, or its brilliance?
Can somebody please out the elephant in the room? As John Kyl takes his turn castigating Sotomayor about her lack of impartiality and questioning her about the improper use of her background, I want a heckler to stand up and scream: "People! White judges side with white people ALL THE TIME!" Improper use of one's background? Bias? Yes, sometimes. It's what locked us into terrible rulings like Plessy vs. Ferguson and Dred Scott, rulings that became hallowed "settled law" that was awfully tough to uproot. Background, my eye. We all need to free ourselves and admit that when it comes to law and established order in America, white is definitely a primary color. Brown and black don't even come close.
The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user bootbearwdc. It was used under Creative Commons license.
