RAISE your hand if you’re sick of the phrase “wise Latina.”
By now, most of America must be able to recite verbatim the assertion of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that a wise Latina would likely reach a better conclusion than a white man.
Contrary to her defenders, she didn’t say merely that they’d likely reach a better conclusion in discrimination cases — which would be a somewhat defensible, although still controversial, statement. She just said “better.”
So what?
To her detractors, who’ve treated this statement with something verging on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, it proves that she is a racist or sexist who’ll rule against white men who come before the court.
They’re asking: Who is the real Sonia Sotomayor? The one with a fairly mainstream, if left-leaning, judicial record? Or the one who gives speeches asserting the superiority of her race and gender?
The idea that her experience wouldn’t influence her is silly, of course. In past nominations, we were told that Clarence Thomas’s childhood poverty had formed him and that Samuel Alito’s blue-collar childhood was relevant to understanding him.
And an analysis of her judicial record by SCOTUSblog found that in 96 discrimination cases she ruled against the discrimination claim 78 times. She ruled in favor of those alleging discrimination only 10 times. In one case, her dissent actually sided with a white-bigot plaintiff. This seems to suggest no bias in the direction her detracters fear.
But she did say “better.” Why would she make the “wise Latina” assertion multiple times?
Simple: This kind of thinking is commonplace among baby-boomer liberals, who’ve conferred special status on women and minorities that goes beyond mere equality.
There is surely a psychological explanation for it, and it goes something like this: Women and Latinos (along with other minorities) were long discriminated against in this country, in sometimes humiliating ways. As these groups worked toward equality, a certain mythology sprung up that they weren’t just equal to the people who were keeping them down, they were “better.”
Perhaps it was a way of coping, or just a way of rallying the troops. Sotomayor herself has said she was trying to inspire young people with these speeches.
When I was growing up, the common refrain I heard among my mother’s feminist friends and later in college in women’s studies classes was, “If women ran the world, there would be no war.” Or: “If women were in charge, the world would be a better place.”
I don’t know what Sotomayor heard about Latinos in her childhood (though I’m sure, like any ethnicity, there was a healthy pride). But the sense that she would reach a “better result” than a white man probably flows more from a feminist influence than a racial one.
Indeed, this type of thinking is still fairly mainstream.
Just look at the title of former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Meyer’s recent (and excellent) book: “Why Women Should Rule the World.” The flap copy asserts that “women tend to be better communicators, better listeners, better at forming consensus.” She says that with more women in power, “politics would be more collegial. Businesses would be more productive. And communities would be healthier.”
In “The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap,” Canadian psychologist Susan Pinker asserts that women are more consensus-minded, team-oriented and, yes, better at reading human visual cues, interpreting feelings and maintaining relationships and relationship networks than men.
Such assertions are more the norm than the exception in feminist literature or books promoting women’s rights. And, of course, there is little doubt that people of different ethnicities and gender are in fact, different.
But not better. It’s time to let go of this outdated canard.
Sotomayor’s record tells us that, though she used the biased language common to her peers, she didn’t really drink the Kool-Aid. The politics of a confirmation hearing won’t give her room to say so now, but let’s hope she knows she should never have said “better.”
kirstenpowers@aol.com