"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 ."

This has caused a huge uproar among conservative and even moderate politicians, to the point of calling her a racist.  And I don't see enough liberal politicians explaining why she's right.  Lots of people say she misspoke, but she didn't.  She's right on the money.

Why? 

Everyone who lives in the US is perfectly aware of the white male perspective.  Everyone knows what white males think about every single fucking thing in the political, social, sexual, artistic, scientific, and religious spheres.  There's no way that Sotomayor, a woman who was educated and excelled in  white male bastions such as Princeton and Yale, could have missed being indoctrinated in those points of view.

The reverse can't be said of white males knowing anything about being Latina and female.  White males can go their whole lives not knowing or caring about such things, and never be hampered in their careers or their social lives as a result.

This is white male privilege.

People who are privileged not only don't understand the difference between their point of view and that of others, they often don't even realize there is or could be a rational difference.  They literally do not know what they are missing, because the culture doesn't show those missing parts.  If you don't live those parts, or you don't seek them out, they are invisible.  And it's hard to effectively judge people who live those lives if you've never seen them before.

No one would want literal space aliens judging our lives — loads of pop culture "aliens meet real people" stories like the Star Trek series and Mork and Mindy illustrate how beings without life experience have to go through a lot of work to understand how those unlike themselves actually function.

That's why Americans not speaking English, or "Black English," is so threatening.  If the white male experience isn't universally understood, it loses a lot of its power. 

I can go along with a universal experience of US culture.  But I don't want it to be based on white male culture.  I want it to be based on principles that a particular set of white males started us out with and that people of every kind have refined — the pursuit of happiness, the bill of rights, freedom and justice.  We started with a gem in the rough, and the Supreme Court is tasked with finding clarity, cutting the gem so that it shines for everyone, in all directions.

And I think a self-aware Latina woman is extremely likely to be able to bring out facets in this gem that whites and males are going to have a harder time finding.