LWV California Voter. The Challenge to Women in the New Millennium

California Voter Online!
The League of Women Voters of California

SUMMER 1999

The Challenge to Women in the New Millennium

Judge Cordell (right) and daughter, Star

Summary of Banquet Speech by the Honorable LaDoris Hazzard Cordell

LaDoris Hazzard Cordell is a Superior Court Judge in Santa Clara County. She is a dynamic speaker whose comments and anecdotes are challenging, thought-provoking, and sometimes very humorous. When she promised to share her insights on race relations, you could hear a pin drop in the banquet room.

Launching into the body of her speech, Judge Cordell promised to follow the same rules she always tries to enforce in her courtroom. These are the Three B's: "BE CLEAR, BE BRIEF, BE SEATED!"

She then addressed the issue of affirmative action with the bold pronouncement that gender is a greater threat to the power structure than race (she predicts that a Black man will be elected U.S. President before a woman is elected to that office). She pointed out that the dismantling of affirmative action programs only came about with the support of the women married to the disgruntled, older white men. She marveled that so many women turned against the very program that has helped them attain positions of power and authority.

Judge Cordell cited a study in which white Americans and native Chinese were shown a picture and then asked to describe it. The Americans invariably described the objects in the foreground, while the Chinese talked about what was in the background. The Judge believes this study is a good analogy for the "racial divide on the eve of the millennium" in the United States.

Judge Cordell believes that white people and people of color perceive the world differently. Because their place in society, indeed their very right to survive, is not secure, people of color cannot ignore the background scenery. Since they are acutely attuned to racism, they actually do worry about being perceived as paranoid by their good-intentioned white friends, who simply are not as sensitive to the racial context of most situations. Poignantly, Judge Cordell explained how being Black frames her world, and related a typical situation: she was arriving for a professional meeting and was advised to park in back where the caterers were supposed to go!

Rather than argue about whose perception is correct, however, Judge Cordell urged delegates to acknowledge the similarities as well as the differences in our multi-ethnic society. In order to bring people together in the new millennium, we need the three C's: COURAGE to face our problems, COMMITMENT to get free of old evils, and CASH to put "where our mouths are."