A Word on Empathy
By Guest Contributor Jamelle, originally posted at The United States of Jamerica and PostBourgie
Judging from jonolan’s comment on a previous post, it’s probably reasonable to assume that conservatives will, in their criticism of Sotomayor, zero in on this line from a lecture she recently gave:
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.
That one’s experiences – and thus ability to understand certain situations – are shaped by one’s identity is a fairly unremarkable and pedestrian sentiment. Indeed, this is largely what Obama means when he says that he’s looking for a judge with “empathy.” The simple fact is that a court dominated by white men will have a hard time looking beyond their circumstance to understand the problems faced by women or minorities. It’s no coincidence that the Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only justice to articulate a compelling dissent to the Court’s ruling in Redding v. Stafford; as a former 13-year-old girl herself, Ginsburg was the only justice who seemed to understand the humiliation involved in being forced to strip to one’s underwear. To borrow from Dahlia Lithwick, “Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.”
On a court where the majority of justices empathize with the powerful and protected over the marginalized and weak, it.s critical that we have someone who can find common cause with the latter over the former. Besides, as Neil Sinhababu correctly notes, it’s not as if Supreme Court justices rarely rules on these issues; these are areas on which the Court regularly offers a judgment, and “an ability to understand other people’s lives” is important to making the fairest decisions possible.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Marcus Kwame wrote:
Thank you! Very well put. The very fact that there is a need for us to explain and defend Judge Sotomayor’s common sense comment is maddening, It’s really disingenuous for attackers to try and spin that statement into something larger. Anyway, it’s always nice to read some good old common sense.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 10:27 am ¶
Fiqah wrote:
Very well-said.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 10:58 am ¶
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:
well-put.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 11:02 am ¶
9jah wrote:
We are right on jumping over the repubs for being disingenious in calling this statement racist or divisive – BUT, let’s not equally gloss over the fact that as stated, Sotomayor’s remarks are flawed.
A wise latina woman is no more or less likely than a wise white male to reach a fair conclusion on a given issue (or vice versa). White males are not per se socially or culturally dysfunctional and we can give our Supreme Court – or at least the democrat wing – credit for being discerning enough to reach a fair conclusion on a given issue.
Sotomayor should have made the more accurate point that a wise latina could add experiential value in reaching decisions of matters of race, gender etc. but we can’t add words for her and as brilliant a person as I assume she is I can’t take her actual words for granted.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 11:04 am ¶
method wrote:
The sentence isn’t well-constructed, even in context. A generous interpreter can straighten it out so that it’s clear that a wise Latina woman more often than not reaches a better conclusion *in cases dealing with Latino/female/underprivileged situational experiences* than a white male who hasn’t lived that life [the life of those experiences]. Conservatives would still attack that thought, but as it stands the sentence makes it sound as if a Latina woman, at least a wise one, inherently has “richer experiences”.
This would be the flipside of the “oppression Olympics” that people talk about here, where there would be a totem pole of people ennobled by the richness of their experiences, with white men at the bottom and some incredibly soulful, oppressed group at the top. Maybe, but even if one thought it, one wouldn’t want to say it out loud before pursuing a public office. No one likes to have the quality of their experiences ranked below someone else’s.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 12:17 pm ¶
Eric wrote:
It’s boggling and infuriating how talking points have been successfully framed by one political party or another, especially in recent years. I have no idea why the word “empathy” in the judicial world is a bad thing, and “judicial restraint” is suddenly a good thing. How does this happen? What is empathy, if it is not the ability to see all sides of an argument — the very thing you’d want a competent lawyer/judge to do? What is judicial restraint but a code word, a euphemism for conservatism, for restraining oneself from doing what needs to be done or what is right?
This is the kind of stuff that makes me crazy. I realize that it is not a judge’s place to make legislation, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with making a balanced, empathetic decision in the framework of a case. There is nothing wrong with empathy, and I would argue that it takes a certain kind of courage and strength to show empathy, and to a certain degree, love for the ones whose views you don’t necessarily share. Yet this is precisely the kind of stance and thinking that is so frequently panned in the US today. You’re a hippy or a “bleeding-heart liberal” if you’d say such things, which just makes me mad.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 1:30 pm ¶
Lisa J wrote:
@9jah she was making that point. The speech was discussing race and gender issues and this ONE sentence was taken out of context. b/c it was part of a broader point.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 1:53 pm ¶
N wrote:
Weren’t people giddy imagining that Sarah Palin would be more understanding of parents of persons with disabilities than other candidates and make better decisions?
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 2:06 pm ¶
Emily wrote:
Not to be a nit-picky lawyer, but there’s been no ruling in the Redding case as far as I know. Judge Ginsberg may have been the only one at oral argument who seemed to understand the case from the plaintiff’s point of view, but as far as I know she didn’t “dissent” from any “ruling” because there hasn’t been a ruling. It is still quite possible that multiple justices will think the particular scenario in Redding was unconstitutional.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 2:51 pm ¶
method wrote:
FYI, here is the actual speech.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 2:56 pm ¶
Queen B wrote:
I really wish Sotomayor’s comments were not continually taken out of context. If you are going to discuss the quote, I think it would be important to put the whole passage out there. Everyone keeps talking about this one sentence and nothing about everything else she said.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 4:29 pm ¶
N wrote:
Thanks for posting the actual speech, I’ve been trying to find what came before the oft quoted statements to put them in some sort of context.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 4:30 pm ¶
G.K. wrote:
@method
Judge Sotomayor was simply saying that one’s experiences have a bearing on the decisions one makes in life, and that,as a Latina, she wouldn’t make the same decisions as a white male who would obviously have a different opinion,having led a different and (posssibly more privileged) life. She didn’t say anything about anybody’s experiences (particularly minorities) being better or more important than anyone’s else. Honestly, it’s sad that her opponents had to reach back to a mere sentence in an 8-year old speech to attack her and claim on the basis on that ONE sentence that she’s not qualified to be a Supreme Court justice. It just shows you how desperate the Republicans are to keep another Democrat (and somebody who’s not white and male) from getting on the court. I mean,gimme a damn break—-it kills me how white folks want to jump all over what they percieve as racism in ONE little comment toward themselves, yet they never seem to think twice about dismissing the very real lived experiences of racism experienced by POC in this country.
Bottm line–the woman is said to more than qualified for the job, and THAT’S what should count,more than anything–not picking something she said 8 years to death and back. Have they even bothered to look at her record or experience—nope,all you hear about is that dang sentence. Good grief.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 7:07 pm ¶
G.K. wrote:
Oops–I meant that she’s more than qualified for the justice position, and her opponents need to quit picking over something she said 8 years ago to death and back.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 7:08 pm ¶
Samia wrote:
G.K., I agree with you completely! I’d be interested in finding out how active some of these Upset Folk are in fighting racism in their own communities. You know, the kind that robs people of personal safety, free movement, education, gainful employment, the right to pursue happiness…do they get as angry about this stuff?
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 11:48 pm ¶
method wrote:
@G.K., I agree that one fairly harmless sentence shouldn’t be that important. Especially since it seems to be a transcript. People always sound funny and vague when you convert spoken speech to text.
Because the claim in the sentence is unqualified, even if the intent is qualified, the conservatives are using it to position themselves with regard to her general stance on judging. What they really care about is this sentiment:
But that doesn’t make as good a sound byte to play on the news. They’re using the sentence as a caricature (hehe) of her position.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 9:23 am ¶
Neville A. Ross wrote:
When being elected to a high office, one has to be careful that past mistakes /speech doesn’t comeback to bite you in the ass. That’s true for POC’s as it is for whites, especially in the USA. I still support Sotomayor’s election to the Supreme Court, and hope that she does well.
Posted 12 Jun 2009 at 12:13 pm ¶
Afro-chan wrote:
I can’t believe other justices assume that their experiences have no bearing in their rulings. That is audacious.
Posted 13 Jun 2009 at 4:52 am ¶