Driving While Latina

(This may not make complete sense...bear with me...)

You've all heard of it...DWB - Driving While Black. It's a charge that civil rights activists make when cops pull over a black guy driving a fancy car in a 'white' neighborhood at night for 'no reason other than because he is black'. Probably happens, for that matter, not so much I would hope nowadays as less neighborhoods are easily defined as 'white' (although it's easy enough to define minority neighborhoods by their predominant color of residency it seems). More simply it's defined as 'profiling', a reasonable law enforcement technique that, like most things in life, can be abused. Essentially, in a 'white' neighborhood in 1989, a cop that routinely is assigned to that area observes a young black man driving a fancy car. Maybe he rolls through a stop sign just a hair and now he gets pulled over. That's pretty much what we're talking about, cops spotting something out of place and assuming the worst, that the car is stolen.

Turn that around for a moment. What would minorities say if you asked them what they would assume about a well-dressed white guy in a nice car driving slowly through the hood? Dollars to donuts they're going to give one of two answers...either he's looking to score drugs or he's looking to pay to scratch some jungle fever itch. Am I right? Am I wrong? Would they instead just assume he's looking for a friend's house in an area with few house numbers? That he's just completely lost? Suuuuuuure. And cops assume the same thing, they don't set up hooker stings or monitored crack purchases in 'white suburban' neighborhoods. They follow patterns and try to meet expectations of what people expect to encounter. And why do they expect it? Experience. Reality. Common sense.

Which rolls me ever so slowly to Judge Sotomayor and her she's-young-enough-to-know-better comment: "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."

Why does this on-the-surface racist comment bother me, personally? Maybe not for the reason you might expect. Yeah, it's bad enough that someone young enough to know better is spouting such racist nonsense (although if it's true that she's a member of the extremely racist La Raza as is being reported, that is quite troublesome to me - certainly more troublesome than some alleged connection between Roberts and the Federalist Society). But I'd be willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt on that. No, here's my beef: I believe that justice should, indeed, be blind. If a law sucks then a judge should still obey it to the letter of the law until it is changed by lawmakers (or struck down). It is not the place of a judge to make that kind of call. Now, sentencing, that's another kettle of fish. Yeah, I can see how life experience could (and, yes, should) help a judge make determinations when allowed and appropriate. If the possible term is 5-10 years and circumstances mean that 5 is more appropriate, then by all means give them 5 years. But if it's a 10 year minimum, that doesn't mean you let them off with 5.

Here's the kicker.

Let's take Judge Sotomayor at her word. She's hearing some sort of case where her life experience makes her more "wise" in determining the outcome of the case than her white male colleague. Assuming each has followed the law I have no problem with her saying that she might have more insight than he in getting to the truth of the matter - maybe understanding the social pressures of the situation, the language nuances a bit more, etc. Again, as long as each follows the law.

Now, having said that, if I were a senator, I would sure as hell want to know if Judge Sotomayor would agree that, presented with a case about a 'white' country club where some older white guys may have been conducting insider trading, that a white male justice might, indeed, with the "richness of his experiences", might be able to come to a better "wise" conclusion than she?

I'll be honest, unless something more troubling emerges, as a Senator my vote could probably be won or lost based simply on her answer to that one question.

You see, if I can try to put it another way...Why is justice blind? The whole point of America (that's hyperbole, folks) is that everyone is created equal. That means no Kings who can get away with murder. It means Bill Clinton can be dragged before a judge for sexually harassing a woman. It means that every citizen (note the careful wording please) has an expectation that they will be treated equally under the law. Hell, we've written exactly that into the Constitution, the highest law in the land. Does it happen, well, no, of course not. But everyone has and deserves to have that expectation and should rail and cry against it if they don't get it. Everyone deserves to be treated equally. A rich white kid should be treated the same by a judge as a poor black kid if they each steal a car. It matters not if the rich white kid has been perpetually abused by his parents his entire life and picked on by everyone at his hoity-toity private school or that the poor black kid has two loving parents and an inexpensive, but safe and comfortable home to live in. They should not be treated differently just because of the color of their skin.

That's why justice wears a blindfold in so many representations. That's why this troubles me so much. What conceivable benefit can there be in saying you know better than someone else about someone else's situation? Does the Judge really believe that being poor and struggling to get where you are means that you can better interpret what lawmakers meant when they wrote a law? It flies in the face of what we are taught to believe about America - that everyone is created equal and that we all have the right to be treated the same. Now comes the Judge telling us that some of us can better decide what is 'right' because of their circumstances, not just in a particular case where it may be true, but as a generalization. If I may interject one final hackneyed phrase...come back and see us when you've walked a mile in all of our shoes, Judge, before you tell us that you have some mystically greater ability to perceive wisdom because of the wear on your shoe leather.

I'll leave you with Jonah Goldberg: "Clarence Thomas understands what it is like to be poor and black better than any justice who has ever sat on the bench. How's that working out for liberals?"