Context is everything, isn't it?

I am getting tired of the rhetoric of the Sotomayor non-controversy.

“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,” said Judge Sotomayor.

This strikes many people as odd right out of the gate. I suppose it did not, to me, because I understood the context within which she was speaking.

Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases (via NYTimes.com).

So, seeing as this is an incredibly famous and recurring idea when talking about the role and function of judges, I find it incredible that it has taken so long for someone to mention it. It is a straightforward issue about whether deciding cases is properly seen in a legal realist fashion or some other fashion. The debate has been going on quite a lot longer than anyone making comment in the press right now and I wish someone would take the 10 minutes to place it all in context rather than screaming 'racist!' as if that were an argument. A friend of mine complained that all of the controversy is about people, who should know better, misinterpreting the sentence as written. Let's put it this way:

I would hope that people with the richness of their experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than people who haven't lived that life.

Nothing objectionable here: people who have experience will 'more often than not' reach better conclusion that people without experience. Now why would she talk about 'a wise Latina woman' and a 'while male'? Racism? Hardly. These people were chosen because she is the Latina (an immodest one, it might seem, but perhaps the accolade is earned in this case) and she was talking about sexism. Obama has sad that 'Judge Sonia Sotomayor, his choice for the Supreme Court, believed that she chose her words poorly eight years ago when she suggested that a Latina judge could reach a “better conclusion” than a white male judge who did not share the same life experiences' (via NYTimes.com). I tend to agree, but presumably not the the reason that Obama thinks.  I tell my students to always consider that there will be people who will intentionally (and dishonestly) misinterpret what you say and to take that into account when you write or speak. It seems to me that Sotomayor failed to consider what that sentence might sound like in the hands of intellectually dishonest and linguistically disingenuous commentators. The context of the talk was discrimination and sexism. Now look at what she said in context rather than in the sterilised echo chamber: 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

In the context of adjudicating cases dealing with racism and sexism, I would hope that a woman of a minority group who has a wealth of experience of discrimination and sexism would more often than not come to more defensible conclusions than a white man who had not experienced either discrimination or sexism.

Still sound racist? If so, I guess you just don't think experience matters. And that is a very odd position to take when calling someone else an 'affirmative-action pick' (via Media Matters and MSNBC).