Watch Your Words When Judging Others (2009)
In the debate about the candidacy of Judge Sonia Sotamayor for the Supreme Court, those who say that the law should be outside individual experience as a criterion for determining the best nominee should go back and review the 1994 movie “Quiz Show,” which is tells the true the story of the manipulations of a television game show to increase viewer numbers. The film concludes in a Congressional hearing, in which Charles Van Doren, one of the contestants who benefitted from manipulations, explains himself and apologizes. Van Doren is scion of a well-known family, good-looking and well mannered, and he explains that he was duped and is thoroughly ashamed of himself. The well-spoken, well mannered members of Congress are sympathetic, but then one member who is not so perfectly mannered rises to say Van Doren is a fool -- and he is fooling everyone.
Within this scenario we have one universal rule: that people should not trick each other for-profit, and two points of view that are determined by different experiences. The members of Congress who have similar privileged upbringings as Van Doren, must ask themselves how such a nice person so like themselves could get in such a mess. Congressman Steven Derounian, however, an ethnic-looking New York everyman who has probably been the target of lies and condescension from people like Van Doren, doesn’t care for apologies: he states bluntly that Van Doren still knowingly deceived millions of people. Thus these two applications of the same rule generate two different rational opinions because of experience.
Or for another example, if someone in a conversation condemns the way you or someone else is treating a child, your first question might be, “do you have children?” We assume people who have raised children will make different judgments about child-rearing, although we certainly all know many people without children with whom we would trust our children over some parents The parents are sure they know the wisdom of child-rearing because of the perspective they have developed from their experience as parents. In both cases the same universal rule gives different of their various experiences.
Psychologists have shown that our snap judgments are frequently more accurate than opinions reached through applying rules alone. Those “gut feelings” come from what we have been conditioned to believe over a lifetime of experiences. When Rush Limbaugh and their ilk accuse Judge Sotomayor of being racist, they are playing to those conditioned responses. “Racism” is such a strong word that it shuts down thinking about its meaning and instead even floods us with intense emotions of suspicion and guilt.
In addition to cuing “experience” and “racist” to the candidate, even before Judge Sotomayor was nominated, some conservative pundits said that they would never accept candidates for the High Court who “allowed emotions to affect their decisions.” Would that description have been applied to a candidate if he had been male? I very much doubt it: the picture that “emotional” evokes is female. The use of that phrase was a cue, this time to our instincts that women are more emotional, but we don’t notice the cue, only our conditioned stereotyped response that such a person should be viewed as unacceptable. Only by recognizing and thinking about what is being implied by the language would we catch ourselves allowing that rhetoric to sweep us into an instinctive response. While one’s gut is frequently helpful, thinking about our instinctive responses is better than instinct alone.
In “Quiz Show,” once Derounian makes his comments, the entire hearing shifts its perspective, recognizing its truth. When people with a range of experiences – say, justices on the Supreme Court – learn about the experiences of someone else, and then apply principles of law, they can think about what they are examining and still draw on their native wisdom.
When we both think about and share our experiences and those of others, we have the best chance to achieve that “perfect justice” in which we all claim belief.
Sally MacEwen
Within this scenario we have one universal rule: that people should not trick each other for-profit, and two points of view that are determined by different experiences. The members of Congress who have similar privileged upbringings as Van Doren, must ask themselves how such a nice person so like themselves could get in such a mess. Congressman Steven Derounian, however, an ethnic-looking New York everyman who has probably been the target of lies and condescension from people like Van Doren, doesn’t care for apologies: he states bluntly that Van Doren still knowingly deceived millions of people. Thus these two applications of the same rule generate two different rational opinions because of experience.
Or for another example, if someone in a conversation condemns the way you or someone else is treating a child, your first question might be, “do you have children?” We assume people who have raised children will make different judgments about child-rearing, although we certainly all know many people without children with whom we would trust our children over some parents The parents are sure they know the wisdom of child-rearing because of the perspective they have developed from their experience as parents. In both cases the same universal rule gives different of their various experiences.
Psychologists have shown that our snap judgments are frequently more accurate than opinions reached through applying rules alone. Those “gut feelings” come from what we have been conditioned to believe over a lifetime of experiences. When Rush Limbaugh and their ilk accuse Judge Sotomayor of being racist, they are playing to those conditioned responses. “Racism” is such a strong word that it shuts down thinking about its meaning and instead even floods us with intense emotions of suspicion and guilt.
In addition to cuing “experience” and “racist” to the candidate, even before Judge Sotomayor was nominated, some conservative pundits said that they would never accept candidates for the High Court who “allowed emotions to affect their decisions.” Would that description have been applied to a candidate if he had been male? I very much doubt it: the picture that “emotional” evokes is female. The use of that phrase was a cue, this time to our instincts that women are more emotional, but we don’t notice the cue, only our conditioned stereotyped response that such a person should be viewed as unacceptable. Only by recognizing and thinking about what is being implied by the language would we catch ourselves allowing that rhetoric to sweep us into an instinctive response. While one’s gut is frequently helpful, thinking about our instinctive responses is better than instinct alone.
In “Quiz Show,” once Derounian makes his comments, the entire hearing shifts its perspective, recognizing its truth. When people with a range of experiences – say, justices on the Supreme Court – learn about the experiences of someone else, and then apply principles of law, they can think about what they are examining and still draw on their native wisdom.
When we both think about and share our experiences and those of others, we have the best chance to achieve that “perfect justice” in which we all claim belief.
Sally MacEwen