Wednesday, July 15, 2009Let the Past Die
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At the moment, Sonia Sotomayor is in the middle of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate. She’s being asked, of course, for her thoughts on the history of American constitutional law. But she’s also being asked questions about the history of Sonia Sotomayor—about not only opinions she's written, but the phrasing of speeches she gave, sometimes more than 10 or 15 years ago. That line about a “wise Latina” justice is not something she’ll be allowed to forget.
An eagerly scrutinizing world had no problem digging up provocative material from her past. Fifty years ago, I doubt it would have been so easy. Fifty years from now, I suspect it will be much easier still. That worries me.
When I think about the confirmation hearings of the future, I think of that old line from William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It’s not even past." And it's true. Those Facebook pictures of you doing Bacardi shots with a lampshade over your head, or that snippy e-mail you accidentally sent to the entire company, will never die. They will live for a digital eternity on some giant server outside Seattle.
I've certainly written enough stupid blog posts and ill-considered e-mails to fill a battleship. Fortunately, I have no career plans that involve the advice and consent of the Senate. But in the various kinds of confirmation hearings that any of us might face in the future—blind dates, job interviews, vetting for just about any job in Tim Geithner’s Treasury—we will all have black marks that Google won't let us forget. And this will only get worse as time passes and the embarrassing, incriminating evidence mounts against us.
So how are we to address this? Perhaps it’s time for us to negotiate a new relationship with the past. I think we can all start by saying to ourselves, The past is not that important. We've all done stupid things.
If that solution sounds wishy-washy, that's because it is. But I do think a cultural shift—not a legislative mallet—is what's needed here. Dropping out of the modern world won't cut it, either: there are obvious and numerous benefits to technological developments (efficiency, nostalgia) and we should feel comfortable taking advantage of them. The trick is to balance the present benefits against the future harms, not avoid both entirely.
Will this shift occur naturally? Maybe, but I'm skeptical. Or at least I'm skeptical that it will occur fast enough. When the Treasury was looking for staffers a couple of months ago, it had tremendous difficulty finding quality people who would be willing go through the confirmation ringer. To my knowledge, a government agency has never encountered such reluctance before. (But I'm sure someone could Google it and find out.)
The past might never die. But at least we can stop caring about it.
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One reason for not "letting the past die" is the importance of a Supreme Court appointee. This is not a Treasury staffer who might be let go in 4 years. This is a lifetime appointment. That necessitates a lifetime of impartiality.
I don't question Sotomayor's experience as a judge. I think she is very qualified in on-the-job experience.
I question the fact that an impartial judge would be blind to race, even in the lower courts, which I don't believe her previous comments were (impartial).
Sure, if she got drunk at a college party, got bad pic posted on Facebook, then great, let's forget those stupid things.
This decision is just too important to be treated so lightly.
Some of this is played out in Daniel Solove's book, The Future of Reputation, which deals with gossip, the Internet, and so forth.
I actually think that a large digital history of everyone will eventually erode this sort of hypocritical "say this and die mentality" Once, everyone has something in the can be brought up against them it defuses the impact of any one statement.
In the past one of the things that made outrageous statements outrageous is that people didn't think they should keep those thoughts private. Without privacy this distinction vanishes.
I share your concerns, but the problem with your solution -- and the likely outcome of the problem itself -- is that all of a sudden, the past will be gone: completely devalued, completely forgotten. Meaningless as soon as it's consigned to the "Out" box.
We already see it issues large and small: Holocaust denial would not be possible without forgetting on a massive scale. Nor would Goldman Sachs' huge profits so soon after its critical role in the housing crisis, or collective expressions of adoration of Michael Jackson after two decades of being creeped out by him.
Because everything is documented and available, everything has the same value. I hope Karl is right -- that ubiquitous documentation will level the playing field. It may give rise to a whole new whitewashing industry that could make Holocaust denial look positively quaint.
tsk tsk, Sage.
If this were a white nominee who had made the equivalent remark --not once, but as part of his stump speech -- would you really be so anxious to "let the past die"?
The problem with not treating the Constitution as a book of rules--solid and unchanging without mutual consent by established procedures--is that it leads us to think it's okay, even good, if some people are permitted to live by different rules than other people.
Once you've conceded that, you can't be outraged anymore if, say, a Bernie Madoff character gets a slap on the wrists because some Senator thinks he's good at heart.
I find that if I make several stupid comments and several bright comments in a particular time frame, my tendency is to ignore the stupid ones while frequently revisiting the bright ones. The best I can hope for in this environment is occasional home runs to go with many dreadful strikeouts.
Perhaps an alternative future approach might involve flipping the burden of proof in judging Sotomayor. Once all past communications are instantly retrievable, we should be relatively easily able to compare Sotomayor's home runs vs. an alternative candidate. The decision rule would then not be whether she struck out once in using the regrettable phrase "Wise Latina" but rather whether her legal accomplishments are quantifiably, objectively, consistently superior to her peers' achievements.
The same universal information access that makes every "Wise Latina" comment instantly available should be able to determine whether Sotomayor is an objectively superior (legal) home run hitter. Shouldn't it?
Another thought, Conor: perhaps some of the madness could be mitigated by emphasizing the context behind controversies.
I mean, really...if we were at the session where Sotomayor was speaking to young, nervous, hispanic female would-be legal professionals, with their hopes for the future and baggage from their past, including a latent perception that minorities are inferior to whites in the practice of law, would we have interpreted the Wise Latina comment as evidence that Sotomayor is racist?
Of course not. We would have easily understood that Sotomayor was attempting to frame her audience's experiences in a positive light, encouraging them to see themselves as fully capable of being superior to their (mostly white) contemporaries. We probably wouldn't have entertained a second thought at the statement.
By contrast, if she were a guest on say, the O'Reilly show, and O'Reilly asked her to rank the races in their legal capacity, and she made the Wise Latina comment in that context...we would be much more likely to judge her a racist.
It isn't conclusive, but it feels like pushing for context helps.
Dress it up in post modern speak, you are calling for us disregard the consequences of our words and actions. That's fine if you're a journalist, no one takes you seriously anyway. If there are no consequences then you are descending into nihlism where nothing means anything and all that matters is what you can talk someone into or out of. Ooops, you're already there! So next time you choose a doctor, a 'significant other', a lawyer, disregard their past, who cares? But a Supreme, no way.
'The past might never die. But at least we can stop caring about it.'
Wrong. You are a product of your past. Your future is a product of your past. The key to your future lies buried in the past. Better you start thinking about not doing anything stupid in the future. Perhaps you won’t.
You are saying: the image that we like to have of ourselves and that we like to present to others, is contradicted by what we have said and done a minute, a year, a decade ago. And those humbling facts are made harder to ignore by the IT revolution. This challenging of our self image is actually part of a centuries long trend, (or so says a recent history of the self, The Rise and Fall of Self and Soul) and is probably a good thing. The effect of these challenges is to lead us to realize that the self-image we cherish and present to others is largely a fiction; that's also what spiritual traditions like Zen Buddhism seek to accomplish. You say, "But at least we can stop caring about [the past]." That course won't work (because it is dishonest and irresponsible) unless it is caused by our stopping caring about the self-images we are so addicted to. I can't, honestly, not care that I was a schmuck yesterday unless I can sincerely say today, "Sometimes I'm a schmuck." So, yeah, we are probably best advised to just face up to the verdict of our past behavior while yet keeping the whole thing in perspective. It's just a lack of perspective that is making this "wise latina" comment a national discussion; the bottom line is: she's qualified; the rest of it is just the gotchya game, gossip, really.
I like it. I don't want to not know, but I don't want to have to care. And the more we know, the more it puts these things in perspective. I see your Bacardi lampshade and raise you a pompous letter to the editor! Can't we all just laugh it off? That would be so nice.