… because the weather was so beautiful she just wanted to stay out there, UD listened to C-Span’s coverage of the Sotomayor hearings. She finds Sotomayor’s low, slow voice intriguing, and wonders why there’s so little New York accent to it.
It looks as though C-Span will also be covering the closing event of the Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts University (Mr UD is one of the organizers), which began its inaugural two-week run yesterday. Details on the event:
The Obama Administration’s
Civic Agenda After Six Months
Friday, July 24, 12 pm-2 pm
July 14th, 2009 at 10:40PM
In other legal news, this seems like UD’s kind of story:
"Officer Lionberger did not see any indicia of a typical theatrical performance."
July 14th, 2009 at 11:37PM
Hey! Maybe she also got some elocution lessons.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906160009
In a November 7, 1996 speech (PDF) at Princeton, Sotomayor listed specific books:
I spent my summers at Princeton doing things most of my other classmates took for granted. I spent one summer vacation reading children’s classics that I had missed in my prior education — books like Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and Pride and Prejudice. My parents spoke Spanish, they didn’t know about these books.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:39AM
Possibility re voice/accent:
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/watching_the_sotomayor_hearings.php
Incidentally, a nice example of how diversity enhances discussion.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:36AM
@Dance. I was thinking the opposite. It looks like the Judge was given a quick education in the classics during the summer.
Isn’t this the opposite of the current diversity…model?
July 15th, 2009 at 3:14PM
Oh, "nice example of diversity" was a meta-comment on the link I posted—it’s to a black man, who because he is very conscious of the way in which non-white/poor people tweak their accents and develop a "second voice" to move in the highly educated world, guesses that Sotomayor’s lack of NY accent comes from that. While UD casually wonders—this is not an analysis that leaps to her mind, because she has had different experiences. (Zadie Smith’s Speaking in Tongues on Obama, of course, should be read on this issue of voices)
Sorry, that was oblique. I am currently debating the role/meaning of experience and diversity with someone via twitter, which generated my comparison between UD’s and Coates’s *very* different reading of a single observation. That type of difference in reading, I think, is exactly one of the things the idea/practice of diversity is supposed to enable. (Incidentally, debate via twitter? Wow. Interesting challenge, a unique medium)
July 15th, 2009 at 4:08PM
Hi Dance: I found the Coates take on the accent interesting – thanks for the link. But actually – in terms of diversity – Coates’s reading was exactly mine. My writing in the post that I “wondered” about Sotomayor’s voice was more about the exigencies (as I see them) of short, thought-provoking posts than about my having little idea why the second voice would have emerged. I was holding back my own take on it in order to maybe prompt some reflections from readers that wouldn’t be led in any way by that take…
One of my best friends when I was a kid was the son of a woman who’d grown up in NY and very consciously rid herself of that “first voice” in order to move, as you say, in a highly educated world.
Don’t know anything about Coates’s background (I’ve read the blog on and off for some time – got there via Andrew Sullivan), so don’t know whether our backgrounds are very diverse. But we have in common the analysis you describe.