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

First, let me say that I would hope that wise persons with the richness of their experience, more often than not, will reach a better conclusion about my analysis than persons who have not lived the life I have lived.

Human cognition and emotion, plus the human experiences we all have lived and genetic factors, shape the person that we are. The evolution of who we are at the present moment continues to influence who we will be tomorrow and how we change and adapt to the “new developing self”.  In simple ways, we are enriched and “limited”  by our experience and our “becoming”.

In the case of Sonia Sotomayor, a wise Latina woman that hopes that any other wise (with all of its definitions and implications) latina (or any other person), would more times than not (since wisdom may not always be present in our imperfect human condition), reach a better (better forDiversity, Equality & Equity) conclusion than a white (or any other person) who has not lived the same and unique life she has lived.

In Psychology we study the application of concepts created through theoretical frameworks and research to our daily life as well as how we express such experience. Judge Sotomayor’s statement, most likely than not, should be seen through the lense of surface and deeper meaning in semantics, heuristics, and identity psychology, law and politics.

Through our U.S. American history, we have embraced identity categories, that although limiting as to what each label may encompass, it assists us in the task of inter-personal communication, comprehension of our similarities and differences, and permits us, in an imperfect human kind of way, to evaluate and measure the extent on how we are structurally inclusive of all identity labels in our institutions and correct any institutional discrimination or injustice that could be violating our own morale, policy, constitutional values, humanity and global human rights.

Sotomayor, just like most of the rest of us, uses in her statement of hopethe labels of woman, Latina and white.  In doing so, she not only reflects the traditional expressions in our multi-cultural and multi-lingual culture, she as well opens the opportunity for continued dialogue regarding the experience of each one of us as people of a “united” state.  She could have as well substituted the word woman, Latina or white with the word personand would have gotten a different perception and response to her expressed statement. But due to our own use of heuristics in communications, her mind at the moment anchored itself through the most readily available representation of her experience in our culture. Her Latina, woman, white ethnic/racial/gender experience has been influenced both by the stereotypes of what each label represents, as well as by the uniqueness of such representation. In the case of the vast Puerto Rican experience (and therefore, her Spaniard whiteness, her African blackness and her Taino Indian-ness), we may include her bilingual, bicultural, mainland United States, mainland Puerto Rico, and sub-cultural New-Yorican experience along with the multi-cultural cosmopolitan experience lived at the low socioeconomic neighborhood of the South Bronx and the city of New York. Her woman experience has been influenced through the many challenges and opportunities she has lived in a country with a fair degree of gender equality evolutionary development. Her experience with “whiteness” certainly includes both the progress influenced by Caucasian people in the United States and the collateral challenges faced after the de-institutionalization of slavery and the still-in-progress eradication of the many thick glass-ceilings maintained in U.S. of America as of today (2009).

Federal appeals judge Sotomayor, just like most of the rest of us in many contexts, uses in her hope statement, the word better.  This word with all of its meanings always seems to vaguely diffuse the deeper meaning of what we imply or intend to say when our cognitions and emotions anchor themselves with what is more common than not in our “sociocultural expressioned mind”. And as such it seems it is always better to use it within the context of what is better for… In Sotomayor’s experience with womanhood, Latina-ness and white-ness, it points to a context of better for diversity, equality & equity, struggles she certainly, in depth and scope, is deeply and uniquely familiar with, affected by and learned to overcome and transform. She is poised, with her top academic and practical intelligence, to be able to once again honor the value of diversity in the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

It is my hope that the intersectionality of gender and identity, ethnic/race, language, socioeconomic class, and sexual-affectional orientation oppressions will have a better chance in the future to be eradicated  for the strengthening of diversity, equality & equity in our national law and global practice. With Sonia Sotomayor as our new Supreme Court Justice we will be a step closer to such reality…!

Hope our hope is yours as well!