Sotomayor And Racial Profiling
Today, Judge Sotomayor moved one step closer to becoming a Supreme Court Justice. With the not so notable exception of RINO Lindsey Gramnesty, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to move the process along to a full vote for confirmation. I previously took a look at this horrific nominee by President Obama, but in light of the recent events with Professor Gates, I wanted to come back to this subject.
First of all, most of us have jobs where our performance is judged by occasional reviews. Typically, these reviews play a large part in determining if we will advance to higher positions. In the case of Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court has heard appeals on six of her decisions, and has overturned her 4 times. This is certainly not a track record that would keep most of us in our jobs, let alone lead to a promotion. In hindsight, consider this quote from the New York Times.
Today, as President Obama moves to pick his first Supreme Court nominee as a successor to retiring Justice David H. Souter — a choice many political observers expect will be a woman — he finds a vastly altered scene, with women holding dozens of seats on the nation’s appellate courts, occupying dean’s offices at prestigious law schools, and serving in some of the highest political offices in the nation.
“The legal landscape has been totally transformed,” said Deborah Rhode, a Stanford University law professor whose research includes gender issues related to the legal profession. “Obama has a lot of possibilities.”
More than 200 women are federal district and appeals court judges, representing about a quarter of each bench, according to statistics compiled in 2008 by the American Bar Association. More than a hundred women are judges on top state courts, and a third of state chief justices are women.
By focusing on finding a specific gender to fill a position, rather than certain qualifications, one can end up with a less qualified candidate. But despite the fact that the President was using "gender profiling", there would have to be a female with a better track record than that, right? This takes us back to a May third FOX News article.
"It would be good to get people who know something besides wearing a black robe," Specter said.
He said women, Hispanics and African-Americans need to be better represented on the high court.
Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also said the court needs more women and minorities.
So here we see Senators Spector and Leahy expressing their concern that President Obama not limit himself to "gender profiling", but also expand the process to iclude "racial profiling". Racial profiling is defined as the inclusion of racial or ethnic characteristics in determining whether a person is considered likely to commit a particular type of crime or an illegal act or to behave in a "predictable" manner. President Obama said that he was searching for a judge who would be "empathetic", and apparently he came to the conclusion that a female Hispanic was more likely to "behave in this predictable manner" than a white male. And he is in good company. Sotomayor spoke of the same thing herself.
First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, 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.
Yet this may seem to be a contradiction to some, in light of President Obama's recent statements on racial profiling.
"And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause casts suspicion even when there is good cause," the president said. "And that's why I think the more that we're working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we're eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody is going to be."
Despite the initial apparent discrepancy, there is no hypocrisy in this statement. One has to look at the big picture and take it all in context. When the officers arrived at Professor Gates house, what did the professor say? "Why, because I'm a black man in America"? His initial response based on the profile of the man who had arrived "a white cop" was that the man was a racist. But based on what President Obama said, isn't that okay? He stated that the previous profiling "casts suspicion even when there is good cause". In other words, if Officer Crowley was profiling Professor Gates, he was wrong. If Professor Gates was profiling Officer Crowley, then Crowley was wrong to arrest him because it was the stereotypical white behavior of other cops that caused Gates to have his suspicions.
Even President Obama believes that he can look at a person's race and determine what their predictable behavior would be. In describing his white Maternal Grandmother as a "typical white person", Obama said the following.
"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know (pause) there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."
So what can we learn from this? The problem in the eyes of President Obama isn't racial profiling in general, it is racial profiling by cops against minorities. It's your "table has been turned" moment. It is the undying Community Organizer inside of the President. Doesn't it make you miss Dr. Martin Luther King Junior a little?
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I look forward to the day when community organizers go back to the dream, rather than the perverted version of the dream they push today. I hope that someday they will encourage the Professors of African American studies and White Police Officers to interact with each other as equals, rather than bringing them together for a beer after polling numbers suggest they better do something. I hope that someday we will not lump all people of a given race into a pattern of behavior we believe to be "typical" to that ethnic group. I hope that my two little children will one day live in a nation where our Supreme Court Justices are selected based on their successes at the bench, rather than their gender or race. And I sincerely hope that this is the collective dream of all races, not just a "typical white person" like myself.
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