The right wingnuts are going after Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for that statement she made in 2001 that a Latina judge could make a better decision than a white male.
"Was she right or wrong to say what she said in this way?" is the question they are all asking right now, and they are answering it for her, "I'm sure she would have worded it differently", as though she should have been thinking ahead to what someone would think in the distant future, like when something important came up. Like now.
But first we must ask ourselves, "Was she right or wrong to think it?"
I think she was right. Here's why:
Let's indulge in stereotyping. I'll take a stereotypical older white male who righteously prides himself on his gender, color, religion, and social class. He is proud that he has no empathy for people who are not just like him, people of the wrong color, gender, religion, or social class, perhaps even someone who was born in the wrong geographical region of the country.
He honestly believes he is a self-made man, even though he may have been born wealthy, gone to the finest schools, and gotten every job in his life through family connections. And he believes that everyone else had the same opportunity, and having chosen not to be just like him, deserves to be exploited and underpaid.
Perhaps this guy is a Southerner, probably he prides himself in being a True Christian, unlike all those who he would exclude from being Christian based on their political views. He looks down on women, blacks, and "Mexicans" for not knowing their place.
As far as he's concerned, the fact that he is rich is the way it is supposed to be, just as much as that he is white or male. The reason that Hispanics or blacks or women or poor people are not like him is because they aren't supposed to be. They don't matter, and they aren't supposed to. The only folks who matter are the older rich white guys. They get to make all the decisions about everybody's life because they're in power, and they're in power because they are supposed to be in power.
They are rich and imagine they deserve to be even richer, because this must be what God wants, or they wouldn't be rich at all. It is their destiny.
Who do we know who thinks this way? I'm thinking Cheney, Bush, Rush, Beck, O'Reilly, Newt... The list is too long for me to more than begin, but you know exactly who is on it.
Guys like this do not have empathy. They don't believe in having empathy. To do so is a weakness. To even want to learn about anyone else's life experience is a character flaw, which could taint them.
They believe that the elite/rich/Southern white Christian male experience is the only one that matters. It is the default, and it is the natural order of things. To fail to accept this is, well, racist. Not to vote for a rich white male is racist, or "reverse racist". To presume that a woman, a black man, or even (God forbid!) a non-white woman could be the best, or even good enough for a top position is absurd to their thinking. To them it is obvious that women and minorities who have achieved success would never have done it without affirmative action, by playing the 'race card', or by cheating. Their qualifications are empty, meaningless. If there is only one elite white male who wants the job, even if he is not as qualified on paper, he automatically should have it.
A man like this has no idea what happens to a poor woman who gets pregnant and realizes she can't afford to raise another child, or to a disabled person or minority who is discriminated against. He doesn't care, either.
An educated Latina like Sotomayor, on the other hand, knows all about the rich white male experience, because she has run into it all her life. She has had it hammered into her all her life as the default experience, the only way to be, which is a lot more than Newt or Tricky Dick 2.0 can say about understanding what women or minorities experience. They have no idea what it is like to be a Latina, whether poor and struggling or a nominee to the Supreme Court with a stellar judicial record.
They have no idea whatever, and they do not care. In truth it matters not a whit if they think that we should have more people just like them on the Supreme Court, and it should not.
We do not need people on the court who do not care about Americans.