I'm a What???????

The news today is very thought provoking. All of a sudden because she identifies with not only her gender but also who she is culturally, Sonia Sotomayor is a racist, a bigot, etc? There are some crazy people in this world who defy logic and reason with every breath they draw and every spurious so-called argument that rolls from their lips.

I am a woman. That statement alone gives me sisterhood with a significant portion of the world's population. I have given birth to children and that gives me sisterhood with another portion of the world's population. There is not a person on this earth who was born male who has more than theoretical knowledge of the experience of a woman's pregnancy and subsequent childbirth. No matter how empathetic a male person is, if he hasn't physically carried a child and given birth, he does not know what the experience is!

I have lost two children. Their father has lost two children. Both of us share feelings with other parents who have lost children. That loss is a highly charged, intense pain that takes years (if ever) to go away. There is no measuring stick to numerically chart the hurt in a scientific way. The pain is not gender specific, it is parent specific and there is another case of "if you haven't been there, you don't really know!"

Being on the receiving end of racist (sexist) behavior in this country (or any other) is a very dehumanizing experience. I remember well being told that I would not be considered from an editorial job on a newspaper because after all "that is a job for a man." I remember an insurance company which wrote the policy on a car bought in my name, paid for out of my bank account, licensed in my name, driven only by me.....was re-written in my husband's name three weeks after we married! That may surprise some of you younger people but in fact, this did happen although it is not likely now. I know a former husband and wife team of engineers who once worked for a major defense contractor. The husband was forced out of his job ...not because of professional incompetence but because he was a black man in a position to supervise a non-black work group. The woman was kept on but not in a supervisory position... her job was to train (but not supervise) her husband's replacement. Those experiences in the workplace or in life influence your viewpoint on work, and life.
Your understanding of what goes on in the "real world" is shaped by your life experiences. Of course, if you have never experienced racist or sexist attacks on your person, if you have always lived in an isolated, insulated world attacks that happen to other people are trivialized and you want to protect your isolated, insulated life experience.

I am also reminded of an elderly substitute teacher I worked with several years ago. She came from a very wealthy family had inherited megabucks but had married a man of modest means and loose fists. Finally, she managed to divorce him but since she had never worked during the marriage, he got ALL the money and she was left impoverished (in spite of the fact that the majority of money was hers from the start)! I'm sure that this lady's ex-husband would have considered losing access to her money to be quite unjust only because she had the nerve to divorce him. Was this justice! Of course not but it was reality.

I do not know Sonia Sotomayor but I have lived long enough to know that life experiences should not be minimalized and discarded. History can not be thrown away becaue it carries over and affects the present. Even the Bible tells us that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons. These "men" who have attacked her have never walked in her shoes and never will. The most important questions to be asked her as she progresses to the Supreme Court are how her life experiences have affected her definiition of justice and fairness!

I wish her well as do others in my generation who have experienced racism and sexism, overt and covert, and who have survived. True, we have seen some changes but we also know that those changes were slow to come and hard to keep.


jmp/5/58/09