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Originally Posted by KSig RC
Even if we take it at "face value" and ignore context, the equation breaks down to this:
All things being otherwise equal, having a certain experience > not having that experience.
That sentence only becomes problematic when you unnecessarily focus on the race issue. Besides this, it's patently impossible, since no two people will ever be completely equal, so it is basically irrelevant - of course she thinks she is best fit to make judicial decisions.
Would you really be more comfortable if she said "I think others are better fit than I"?
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No, simply that she was as fit as others without asserting that her ethnic heritage and culture experience made her more likely to be fit that others. The element that you regard as unnecessarily focusing on race is the essential issue.
I think it's a mistake to assume ethnicity/culture as a qualification in itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KSig RC
It doesn't? Because we're completely immune to poor decision making? We're so infallible that, 100 years from now, nobody will facepalm over our ignorance, just like we do over decisions from 100 years ago, and they did over decisions 100 years before that, and . . .
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No, I think we're very likely to be judged harshly by history. But I think it's easy to assume that had we lived back in time, we'd, of course, bring our superior standards back in time with us. I think it's faulty to assume that. How many white people, Trent Lott apparently excepted, think that legal segregation is where it's at today? And yet, respectable people supported it. Being able to recognize unacceptable law today is no guarantee that you'd have been able to do it in the face of a society that regarded it as normal.
And sure, MysticCat's point that non-whites might have been less likely to agree about the legal decisions we now regard as wrong seems to be a good one. But it's also kind of silly: if we had only been progressive enough to have a more diverse judiciary in the past, we'd have also been a whole lot less likely to regard discriminatory behavior as normal generally, don't you think?