Quote:
Originally Posted by Jadex
She is a member of La Raza is she not?
Did she not make that comment about white men?
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And the remark resembled KKK ideology how?
This is how I think of it. I'm certain you will disagree, but laying it out will tell exactly where we disagree.
First, I grew up always hearing that as you get older you lose lots of things. You lose physical beauty. (I think some old people are quite lovely, though, so this isn't always true.) You lose vitality, energy. (I do know some older people who are quite energetic. My mother climbs hills like a billy goat. While I pant and perspire my way upward.) Your health suffers. Your eyesight goes. Your hearing goes. Clearly this isn't true for everyone, but age does involve losing some of the things we take for granted when we are younger. The pay-off, though, is supposed to be in wisdom. You've been around the block, so you know your way around. You have all the benefits of hindsight. You can use your past experiences and apply what you've learned to current issues and problems. Getting old bites, and to make it worse, you have the knowledge to appreciate just how hard it bites.
So the older you get, the wiser you get. But the wisdom isn't the product of the time you've been on this planet. It's the product of the experiences you've had. People who've traveled talk about how it broadened their perspective. It's not the miles, it's the experiences. People who've lived in different places can talk about those places with the voice of experience. People who've tried different jobs can talk about those jobs with the voice of experience.
Sometimes you hear people talk about how if you've only lived in one place, if you've never gone far from home, for school or for a job or even for a vacation, how limited your perspective is. It's limited because your range of experiences is limited. If you've never seen the ocean, you can try to imagine it, but you'll never know what it really smells like. You'll never know how soothing the sound of the waves can be. You'll never know how hot the sand gets. Pictures and stories represent the experiences, but they don't impart the experiences.
And experiences give us wisdom because they give us insight. I know what the sea smells like to me. I know how many colors of blue and green and brown and yellow and red I see when I'm out on a boat. I know how I have to catch my balance on a rocking boat. I don't know what the sea smells like to you, I can only surmise that your experience is similar. You may get seasick on a boat. If I shared my experiences with someone they would only get a fragment of what the ocean is like. If you shared your experiences with that some someone, they would get more information. We save the information we get from the experiences we have. And we use that information. I've only been on the Atlantic, but if I were to take a trip to the Pacific, I would know what shoes to take on the boat, I would know to take a jacket, I would know to take my sunglasses.
The reason all this applies to Sotomayor is that she has experiences that other justices on the Supreme Court don't have. Every justice is unique, every justice comes to the court with his own set of experiences. But we don't live in a perfect society where every person is judged on the merits of his achievements, on his contributions or his talents. We live in an imperfect society where there are poor people. We live in an imperfect society where discrimination exists, and the recipients of that discrimination overwhelmingly tend to not be white males. We live in an imperfect society where people don't speak the same language, and even when they do they don't use that language the same way. We live in an imperfect society where equality is an aspiration, but we are a long way from it.
Sotomayor has worked in the judiciary for many years. Before that she attended Princeton and Yale. She lives and works in a world that is predominantly white male. She talks to them and hears their perspective on many issues, and shares that perspective on many issues. But she also has experiences that her colleagues will never have. The experience of being Puerto Rican in a world that isn't always friendly to Puerto Ricans. The experience of learning English as a second language. She has a diversity of experience. Experience is knowledge.
So when Sotomayor, in talking about the judiciary and minorities (because that's what the conference was about when she made her remark), was looking at it from two sides. The side of being a judge, trying to apply the cumulation of your knowledge and experience to interpret the law the way it was intended to be interpreted, the way it was written. And the side of being a minority and how the law affects minorities. How laws are intended to be applied to white and minorities in exactly the same manner. And how whites and minorities don't live in exactly the same circumstances. So applying those laws fairly and justly involves understanding the different circumstances.
Sotomayor was pointing out that in cases involving the judiciary and minorities (the conference topic), that her experiences as a Latina gave her greater insights into those specific circumstances. Her distinct experiences from a white male judge who didn't have her experiences endow her with knowledge he doesn't have. Just like his experiences, distinct from hers, endow him with knowledge she doesn't have. But in reference to the conference topic, she perceived she had more minority experience so would have more knowledge to apply to minority cases.
That's how I see it, anyway.
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