For those of you who haven't yet seen Rachel Maddow engage, confront and unravel Pat Buchanan on her show last night, you're missing out. The topic was Sonia Sotomayor and the nature of her nomination-- and affirmative action. Like many people here (judging by the rec list) I watched the interaction yesterday evening and felt pulled between satisfaction and outrage. The characteristic of the piece that will stick with me is simple: Screaming-mad white man being politely challenged by calm white woman, and responding by increasing the volume and dialing down the brains.
Damn fine show, Rachel. You looked off a few pitches, got a pitch to hit, and drilled it into the gap. Stand-up double. But here's the home-run line of argument I wish you could've used: Buchanan, Limbaugh, Sen. Sessions, Gingrich et al. are working from a completely misguided notion of neutrality that can be simply summed up as "White Makes Right."
The Limbaugh crowd, incensed about Sotomayor's claim to be a "wise Latina" whose experiences as a disadvantaged American guide her work as a judge, argue that the now-famous statement means it is impossible for Judge Sotomayor to interpret and apply the law neutrally. The implication is that a neutral perception in terms of race is a precondition for service on the Supreme Court. But there's an assumption undergirding the whole argument that is really, er, problematic.
White people's perception of the world is seen by these folks as inherently neutral. Or at the very least, a white person's racial neutrality is an assumed quantity.
I thought I had read a very clear enunciation of this idea and it's underlying problems a couple days ago (I think it was Ta-Nehisi Coates) but I can't find it now.
So I'll just give it up to Colbert: The Word 7/16: Neutral Man's Burden
I wish that Rachel Maddow had pointed out to Buchanan that the burden of proof of a person's neutrality is not distributed the same way for whites as for non-whites, nor for men as for women. Everyone carries their life experiences with them, and those experiences inform our judgments, actions and reactions on a daily basis. White male experience is held to be neutral, and all other experience is held otherwise.
But again-- Buchanan didn't throw that pitch, exactly. Kudos to Rachel for hitting the "She's only the nominee because she's Latina" fastball.