"With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects"
About this Quote
Her appeal to “statistics” is also strategic. It’s the language of courts and policy memos, not personal grievance. By invoking data and “cultural biases built into testing,” she shifts the conversation from individual worthiness to systemic measurement error. Tests aren’t neutral thermometers; they’re instruments calibrated to certain social experiences, vocabularies, and coaching infrastructures. She doesn’t have to say “power” to make power visible.
Context matters: as a judge, Sotomayor is speaking from inside the institution that arbitrates fairness. She’s aware that affirmative action is often caricatured as favoritism. Her intent is to recast it as remediation for distorted baselines - a tool designed to correct for the ways “objective” metrics quietly launder inequality. The subtext is a warning to gatekeepers: if you fetishize the score, you may be mistaking privilege for potential and calling it merit.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sotomayor, Sonia. (2026, January 16). With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/with-my-academic-achievement-in-high-school-i-was-84280/
Chicago Style
Sotomayor, Sonia. "With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/with-my-academic-achievement-in-high-school-i-was-84280/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/with-my-academic-achievement-in-high-school-i-was-84280/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
