Obama Responds to Sotomayor’s Critics, Kind Of…

In an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, the president responded to critics of his Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, specifically on the issue of her embrace of identity politics/justice. In the title I say Obama kind of responded, because his statement is rambling, contradictory and attempts to deflect criticism rather than address it head on. Watch for yourself (the interview starts at 1:17):

The president starts by canceling out any defense he or Sotomayor could possibly have for her, I believe, racist statement saying, “I’m sure she would have restated it.” Then continues with a half-hearted and incoherent defense.

If it were “clear” in context that Sotomayor “was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through,” then the defense would be unnecessary. Instead, it’s clear in her statement that she takes her gender and racial experience, whatever that is, much further.

“My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.” Sotomayor said in her now infamous lecture to La Raza in 2001.

She’s not saying that her experiences lead her to understand others who are not like her, but that her judgments will be different from others’ judgments because of her gender and race. She believes that she may “care” enough to understand the people who bring cases before the court but recognizes her limitations, which is where her race and gender fill in the gaps. The point is, she should take the time to block out her race and gender from her judgments and be impartial. Sure it may be hard, but she’s up for a post on the highest court in the country, impartiality should be expected of her.