Scott Lemieux points out a double standard in Stuart Taylor’s assessment of Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor. Taylor wanted us to look at Alito’s actual judicial opinions to assess him as a nominee. With Sotomayor, though, Taylor has been content to make loaded suggestions about her activism as a student.
It's that activism that I'm interested in addressing here, because I think Taylor's suggestions are quite noxious. This is what Taylor wrote:
[S]ome may see Sotomayor's letter as evidence that she was predisposed to look for the worst, not the best, in the institution that had afforded her such opportunities.
Since the “some” is unattributed, I think we can assumed Taylor is talking about himself. Taylor's paternalism is rather amazing here: In his view, Sotomayor didn't deserve credit for being at Princeton, Princeton deserved credit for her being at Princeton. The idea that people of color admitted to elite universities lack the privilege to shape the schools they attend to their liking because they should be grateful to the benevolent whites who let them in is reprehensible. It is the genteel, pipe-clutching update to Pat Buchanan’s belief that black people shouldn’t complain about racism because after all, they’re not living in Africa anymore.
Students of color have the same rights and privileges as any other student to lodge grievances with the administration about how business is conducted. The idea that this privilege is somehow waived as a result of being let in because they are “guests" -- while whites are the “real” students -- goes to what I think is the heart of disputes about affirmative action: competition for resources. No one complains about mediocre white legacy students, because they are seen as having a claim to ownership over these institutions, while students of color are not. Or to use a Broderism, Princeton alumni like Taylor are offended by the activism of alumni like Sotomayor because they were messing up the place, and it wasn’t people like Sotomayor's place. It was people like Taylor's place.
There is little doubt however, that the work done by campus activists in those days toward increasing the number of Latino students and faculty, as well as undoing centuries of entrenched bias against people of color in academic offerings, was ultimately in service to racial harmony and a better education. Academia was once highly resistant to the contributions of nonwhites. Now it isn't, and that's for the best: How can one study American history without John Hope Franklin or the modern American novel without Toni Morrison?
Sotomayor's college activism may have been radical. But sometimes, the radicals are right. This was one of those times. Most important, though, it was respectful. Sotomayor seemingly understood that, in activism, finding a legitimate means of pursuing one’s ends was equally important as the end in itself. That, I think, is worldview she shares with the president.
— A. Serwer
