You watch the clips of Limbaugh foaming at the mouth about how the way to get ahead in the Obama administration is to hate Whitey, or you read Newtie's silly tweeting about how Sotomayor should be rejected as a racist, and all you can do is shake your head and trust that the American people, and the Senate, are smarter than to take any of that seriously.
But there is a more pernicious lie pervading this discussion (and indeed pervading the entire issue of race in this country). Most recently, I heard it being spouted by John Cornyn on on "This Week" this morning. The lie is:
Because white men don't talk about how they are going to let their ethnicity and gender influence their decisions, no such influence exists.
I am a product of white privilege. A decade ago, I wouldn't have said that. It was only because of specific diversity education experiences, primarily in my teacher certification classes, that I realized the truth of that statement.
"White privilege," that bundle of realities that adds up to white middle-classness being a sort of "norm" against which everything else is compared, is pernicious specifically because it flies under the radar of most privileged white Americans.
I am not a product of male privilege, but it exists as well. Because women are half the population, I think women have been able to come further in overcoming male privilege than non-white ethnic groups have come in overcoming white privilege, but certainly both forms of privilege still exist.
John Cornyn is undoubtedly one of those for whom the whole concept of white male privilege is flying so far below the radar that it would be virtually impossible for him to see the reality, no matter how forcefully and clearly it might be demonstrated to him. Republican white men above a certain age, who hail from non-coastal regions of the country and who hold positions of power, can seem particularly intractable in their blindness to the existence of white male privilege. Short of some kind of Road to Damascus moment that alters the time/space continuum around him in order to teach him a lesson, I see no real hope that Cornyn will ever get it.
But the confirmation debate is an opportunity for us to have a part of that national conversation Obama spoke about in Philadelphia -- the part about how ALL of us are shaped by ALL of our life experiences, including the experience of living life as a (insert ethnic identity here) (insert gender here).
The part about how ridiculous it is to suppose that Justice Roberts's decisions on the bench are not influenced by having lived his entire 54 years on this planet inside a white male skin.
The part about how the only difference between how previous and current Supreme Court justices have used their ethnic and gender experiences in their decisionmaking on SCOTUS and how Justice Sotomayor will use hers is that she is either more honest about it or more aware. (Admittedly, Justice Alioto was an exception to the general silence or denial in this area, but only partially: he acknowledged that his family's Italian immigrant experience affects how he sees some cases, but did not acknowledge that his white male experience affects how he sees all of them.)
And the corollary: that because we are all products of our life experience, the wisest Supreme Court will always be a Supreme Court that has a broad array of differing life experiences, including differences in gender and ethnicity, as well as differences in socieconomic background, academic experience, and professional history.
No new ideas here, just a hope that they will become part of the national dialogue over the next few weeks.