Context

[budobudo]

 "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

This is the quote that is supposedly taken out of context. The explanation I get from most sources seems to be something to the tune of:

She was speaking only

Comments

[mrbobafett]

I think the important thing is that justice may be blind, but judges are not. Judges are human and have their views and judgment colored by hundreds of things, like many people

[budobudo]

I have two comments here.

1. This woman is not an outsider. She is every bit the product of the system that produces every judge.

2. Assuming that an entire class of judges, in this case white males, are tainted by “white privilege” is every bit as bad as assuming all minority judges are tainted by affirmative action style policy or political correctness.

[mrbobafett]

She is an outsider in as much as she has experiences as a female and as a Latino that the other justices mostly lack. Only one other has the life experience of being a woman. Also it's not like she was born and raised as a judge. She has experiences outside of school and work. However I would be very surprised if she did not have different experiences in the classroom and the courtroom than a white male would have had in the same room 15 years earlier

[budobudo]

First of all, I know what white privilege is. (though you explanation is a good one)

The net result is that being white and male is counted as a strike, however small, against a person's value as a judge when it should be ignored.

[budobudo]

It should be noted that it is counted as a strike by those that hold a similar opinion to Sotomayor's. I am not asserting that the system in general hold this same bias.