I’m going to take a break from one political topic—the disillusion that some who voted for Barack Obama are experiencing or will experience (and the ability of Gulliver’s Travels to help idealists of all stripes to understand and work through disillusion)—to take on another. There is a (predictable) furor over President Obama’s choice of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court justice, and some of it involves issues that those who love literature can appreciate.
The controversy began when the president spoke of the need for a Supreme Court judge to be empathetic as well as intelligent, well-grounded in the law, and respectful of the Constitution. Some on the right are seeing empathy as a code word for “social activist,” although defenders of the president have countered that of course a judge needs to be able to enter into the perspectives of others and see the world from their point of view. Judges just have to make sure that they strive to balance this understanding with a respect for law and precedent. Just because you understand someone doesn’t mean that you should rule in his or her favor.
Since Sotomayor was nominated, the attacks have racheted up a notch, especially over a passage that appears in one of her speeches. The words that critics are focusing on are the following:
“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.”
Defenders of Sotomayor are arguing that the words have been taken out of context and that she was actually exploring the complex issue of the influence of one’s background on one’s judgment. They point out that she goes on to acknowledge that one can rise above one’s background:
“I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.”
Sotomayor then adds a “but,” however. One has to work to achieve such a perspective, and not everyone is willing to make the effort:
“However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Others simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.”
Sotomayor doesn’t go so far to say that members of minorities are more likely to be aware of the perspectives of whites than whites are of minorities, but she could. I once heard African American writer Paule Marshall talk about how her mother, a maid, knew far more about her employers than her employers knew about her. It wasn’t a case of her having a good heart or being more intelligent. Being in a vulnerable position, she had to read the power dynamics in order to keep her job.
But whether or not minorities are better at reading whites than whites minorities, Sotomayor’s point about the significance of life experience is reasonable. One does not interpret the law in a vacuum, even as one strives to be fair. Justice John Roberts, in his confirmation hearings, compared a judge to an umpire, but this is ingenuous—if the law were that simple, we could employ robots rather than humans on the bench. This vision of the law doesn’t explain why his own rulings have tended to generally favor those in power. Perhaps the chief justice thinks he can be a cut-and-dry umpire because he is blind to how his privileged background shapes his world view.
One could make the argument that Sonia Sotomayor might prove to be a more effective justice because she is aware of how one’s upbringing shapes one’s perspectives. Or she will be more effective, that is, if, after acknowledging her perspective, she strives to be impartial.
A mixed race student of mine (Philipino and African American) once produced a senior project that demonstrates the point I have been making. Eleanor’s question was whether one’s race and ethnicity enters into the way one interprets literature. For her study she wrote a “reading autobiography” where she studied her own responses to various works of fiction over the years. She also analyzed the reading responses of eight students, four men and four women. Two of the students were black, two white, two Asian and two mixed race.
Her project revealed many fascinating insights. I remember especially her account of her reading experience of Judy Blume’s Freckle Juice when she was a child. She realized that she loved the book, in which the child longs to have the freckles that his classmates have, because it helped her work through ambivalence about her own dark skin.
But the point that is applicable to Sotomayor is that, of Eleanor’s eight readers, all but two of the students were aware that their race or ethnicity played a role in their reading experiences. The two student who were not aware were the two white students. The influence of race can be invisible to those who are members of the dominant race.
It’s important to add that, in literature interpretation as in the law, one’s race or ethnicity is the starting point, not the final result. One still has to produce a smart and credible interpretation.
One final observation about learning to put oneself in another’s shoes. One value of literature is that it invites fictional identification with people who are very much unlike us. We may even find ourselves identifying with disturbing characters, say a pedophile (Humbert Humbert in Lolita) or a murderer (Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment). Again, just because we learn to understand them or even find elements of ourselves within them doesn’t let them off the hook. People who have committed the crimes these characters commit should be punished. But teaching our students how to enter into and appreciate sensibilities different from our own is one way we prepare them to negotiate a diverse society and a globalized world.