I’ve been half-listening to the Sotomayor hearings all this week, and have been fairly bored—how many times can you listen to a woman answer the same question? But every once in a while someone throws out a real gem, like Senator John Coryn (R-Texas) quoting Martin Luther King Jr. to make an anti-affirmative action point (because that’s exactly what MLK meant when he said he dreamed of a day when his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”) The response to the hearings in conservative press has been just as cringe-worthy and revealing—take an editorial that my friend Ethan highlighted on his blog, originally from the National Review’s website, in which

Mark Goldblatt[,] decr[ies] Senator Dick Durbin’s assertion that the judgment of history “is likely to revolve around the question, ‘Did she restrict freedom or did she expand it?’” Goldbatt considers this a ridiculous assertion. He writes:

..it’s virtually impossible to expand freedom without simultaneously restricting it. Take, for example, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which declared racial segregation illegal in public schools — a ruling now deemed sacred by liberals and conservatives alike. In one sense, Brown expanded the freedom of African Americans to send their children to previously all-white schools. In another sense, however, Brown restricted the freedom of communities in Kansas, and across the country, to keep their schools segregated along racial lines.

Yes. Goldblatt is right. Brown v. Board did in fact privilege the freedom of all Americans to have access to federally funded institutions over the “freedom” of bigoted Americans to keep black Americans out of those institutions. And what kind of country is this if we don’t recognize the real ethical difference between these two “freedoms?” That’s a rhetorical question, but I’m going to answer it anyway: it’s a country in which the rights of white Americans are viewed as the sacred default, the barometer against which everyone else’s rights are measured and which no one can challenge.

On that note I want to quote liberally (hah!) from this Washington Post Op-Ed by Eugene Robinson.

Republicans’ outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor’s musings about how her identity as a “wise Latina” might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any “identity” — black, brown, female, gay, whatever — has to be judged against this supposedly “objective” standard.

Thus it is irrelevant if Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. talks about the impact of his background as the son of Italian immigrants on his rulings — as he did at his confirmation hearings — but unforgivable for Sotomayor to mention that her Puerto Rican family history might be relevant to her work. Thus it is possible for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to say with a straight face that heritage and experience can have no bearing on a judge’s work, as he posited in his opening remarks yesterday, apparently believing that the white male justices he has voted to confirm were somehow devoid of heritage and bereft of experience.

…Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was more temperate in his remarks than most of his colleagues, noting that Obama’s election victory ought to have consequences and hinting that he might vote to confirm Sotomayor. But when he brought up the “wise Latina” remark, as the GOP playbook apparently required, Graham said that “if I had said anything remotely like that, my career would have been over.”

That’s true. But if Latinas had run the world for the last millennium, Sotomayor’s career would be over, too. Pretending that the historical context doesn’t exist — pretending that white men haven’t enjoyed a privileged position in this society — doesn’t make that context go away.

Yes, justice is supposed to be blind. But for most of our nation’s history, it hasn’t been — and women and minorities are acutely aware of how our view of justice has evolved, or been forced to evolve.

While not a new idea by any means—indeed it’s rather obvious—this particular expression of white male privilege really sticks with me. The idea that the experience—and by extension the rights—of the white male is the “default” or norm or natural order of things is the main roadblock encountered by those who are advocating on behalf of the rights of non-white-male-heterosexuals. It’s assumed from the outset that they represent something deviant that will corrupt the norm. And what is this corruption other than the audacity to say “your rights are not primary” and the possibility that that assertion will become a reality (as it did after Brown v. Board)?

As women have gained victories in the fight against sexual assault, a lot of the negative male response I have seen comes largely out of fear. Yes, some of the “women ask for it” rhetoric comes out of straight misogyny or a lack of understanding about consent or entitlement over female bodies, but much of it seems couched in the fear of changing standards of behavior—anger pointed at women framed in terms of “she shouldn’t have been drinking, where is her responsibility for her actions” so often seems to come from male resentment of having to now be responsible for one’s own sexual advances and behavior, and the fear of being held accountable to that responsibility by law. Why do so many men continue to use false rape claims as a way to downplay the issue when it has been shown that the percentage of false claims is extremely low? Fear that their behavior will one day find them on the wrong side of the law…?

Robinson is absolutely right about context. The white male agonizing over “reverse racism,” the denial of a rape crisis, the fight against gay marriage…the fact that these battles exist reflects a past in which entire groups of people were denied rights from the outset, making it possible for the dominant group to establish foundational norms. The fight to establish equal rights over the years has thus been framed not as a fight to make things as they should have been in the FIRST place, but as a chipping away of established white hetero male power. And instead of questioning the origins and fairness of that power, the response is simply the fear of losing it…and this is why conceptions of racial hierarchy and gender are so important to our collective future. Without re-framing power-dynamics, and doing so starting from when our kids are young, the assumption of default rights will persist and the fear of power loss trumping the desire for equality will continue.

This is all very 101 in a lot of ways, I know. But every now and then it helps me to break down what’s behind the inane comments, the racist questions, the woman-hating screeds…it helps me to re-direct personal efforts and see a more clear path to where we could all be going. I guess that’s as optimistic as I get today.

(wow this got out of hand. apologies for the length but thanks for reading if you got this far.)