Race and the Media

The nomination by President Barack Obama of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court has, yet again, opened a debate about the often emotive and divisive issue of race in American society. Sotomayor is a woman and if confirmed, she would be the Supreme Court’s third female justice, Sandra Day O’Connor being the first. Thankfully, her gender is not the problem this time around.

Sotomayor would also be the country’s first Hispanic justice and that, it seems, is a huge problem.

At the heart of the debate is the allegation that Sotomayor is a ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ racist. Much has been made by the media of her ‘wise Latina judge’ comment. Here is what she said in a lecture on Cultural Diversity at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001: “Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that wise old men and wise old—and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. 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 wasn't lived that life”.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, radio host Rush Limbaugh and others rushed to label Sotomayor a racist over the remark. Gingrich has since recanted but Limbaugh has not, going to call her ‘an irrational judge’ on his show, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ05NHuk19o.

On Fox News, she has been called ‘arrogant, stupid, unconstitutional, recipe for lawlessness’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BssHWJcx4B4.

The reasoning behind the attacks on Sotomayor is that just by uttering such comments, and more than once and in public, she has shown herself to be a blatant racist who should be disqualified from the Supreme Court bench.

But in essence, was Sotomayor not saying the obvious, that a person's experiences influence how he or she sees the world? And if anyone reads Sotomayor's 2001 speech over again, they can see that the prevailing media discussion on that quote is totally misleading.

Blogger Jason Linkins argues the same at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/03/media-enabling-race-based_n_210811.html: “Her point was that people's backgrounds affect how they see the world. This would seem to be a rather uncontroversial fact of life; justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Samuel Alito made similar statements about their own backgrounds to no great controversy.”

This bears resemblance to Michelle Obama’s case in the run-up to the presidential election late last year. Her comment that “this was the first time I am proud of my country” dominated the media narrative. Parts of the media used this to mount the case that she was an unpatriotic citizen and, by proxy, so too was her husband.

The fact that what she actually said was “this was the first time I am really proud of my country” was conveniently ignored, so too were her later explanations that she was in fact referring to the country’s political process.

Back to Sotomayor. While Judge Sotomayor's life story is an interesting one —born in depressing circumstances in the Bronx to non-English speaking parents, diagnosed with diabetes at eight, losing a father at nine, Princeton then Yale, marriage then divorce —but it shouldn't be the focus of her nomination to serve on the Supreme Court. The media should instead focus on her intellectual ability, her judicial philosophy, and the nature and quality of her legal experience. But it seems that experience isn't irrelevant.

But all the media wants us to do is condemn her as an unwise Latina woman.