In two big news stories of recent weeks—the Sotomayor confirmation hearings and President Obama’s reaction to the arrest of a black Harvard professor– a key player was a concept: the concept of impartiality. It and its various siblings (“unbiassed”, “neutral”, “objective”) are among the most misleading words in the language.
Some years back Sotomayor said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as an interpretor of laws] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” This was made much of by opponents as indicating that Sotomayor would be biassed in the job, if not racist. She thenceforth did a fine job of impersonating the sort of neutral, colorless person the highest court job description supposedly calls for.
But of course this is all nonsense. All supreme court justices come to the job with racial, social, and economic background. In order to neutralize their life experience you would have to lobotomize them, which might also limit their usefulness.
The fact is, impartiality is a red herring. Although we have the term, there is no such thing. It’s an empty category. You could say it expresses an unattainable but desirable goal, that you want people in there who will at least try to be neutral. But that’s not so either. There’s no such thing as sort of unbiassed, partially impartial. The background justices bring to the job is not just a liability; it is all they have: their experience, their thought, their sense of right and wrong. The fact that most justices have been white, privileged men doesn’t make them less (or more) biassed. It just means the whole court has been unbalanced in that direction. Sotomayor will not be less biassed but her appointment will help correct that imbalance.
The myth of impartiality and neutrality played a role in the controversy over the arrrest of the black professor by a Cambridge cop. Obama was criticized for having slipped in his highwire act of attempting to seem post- racial by calling the police action “stupid.” Presidents are supposed to be presidential, meaning above the fray, occupying neutral space at the top. But of course presidents are not neutral and Obama’s own experience of being racially profiled no doubt gives him a certain valuable insight into the issue. It’s actually something of a relief to have him off that highwire, which was only misleading (and stressful for him, I would think). It’s understandable that he would regret using the word “stupid” , but if we weren’t all bending over backwards to be neutral, the biassed-sounding term is probably more true than not.
The late Walter Cronkite, whom one survey found to be “the most trusted man in America” was not neutral. He was an example, along with Edward R. Murrow, of newsmen who seemed both reliable and biassed, a respected reporter who took a side in the Vietnam War debate, a side that came to seem right to many when he took it. “And that’s the way it was…”? Not really. Only a version of the way it was.
There are no neutral spaces in the universe, not this column (doing my best though I am to tell the truth of things as best I can, given my version of a white, male, middle-class background), not the editorial opposite this page, not both these opinion pages, not this newspaper. And not the Supreme Court. Obfuscating rhetoric aside, that pinnacle of American justice system is a revered institution not as a neutral space, but as our most influential battleground.
Many of us hope that Sotomayor will be a wise justice who, empowered by her rich experiences as a Latina woman of working class background, will help keep Roe v Wade in place, come down on police and corporate power, generally have a liberal effect on the country. And yes, with any luck at all, with her confirmation the cause of the privileged white male (the wealthy, the corporate, the racist) just took a shot.
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