Leave it to Rush and Newt to articulate some sound arguments against a Supreme Court pick. But enough about sarcasm.
The decision to confirm or not Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice might hinge on a few dozen words she uttered more than 8 years ago. At a UC Berkeley speech in 2001 she said that:
“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 lived that life.”
Scandalous! Acknowledging in a measured way that there are inherent differences and complications between the life experiences of different races should NEVER be brought up in public discourse. But there is more. She opened her speech by saying that:
“Latinas are making a lot of progress in the old-boy network.”
Appalling. She has some nerve being proud of her heritage AND saying women have made headway in a male-dominated field (14% of professionals in the legal field were women in 1975; 40% in 2002–headway? ha!).
This is at the crux of the right-wing’s problem to woo minority voters. They don’t get there is no such thing as an “American” life story, just as they ignore class differences for their own benefit. They are caught in a Leave it to Beaver episode.
Sotomayor is now being called a “reverse racist” by the likes of Limbaugh and Gingrich (reverse racist? does that mean a race is racist toward her? or that she does not have hatred or intolerance for other races? can someone get this people a Webster?).
The pride she has in being a Latina and thriving in America is being pigeonholed by ideologues and hot-air propagandists as a hatred of white people. She apparently can only be proud of being an American, period. Not Latina, not Puerto Rican, not a woman, not of being raised by a single mother, not of living in an unsafe and torn down neighborhood as a child, and most definitely not all these things combined. She can only be proud of being an American judge who graduated from Princeton and Yale. Context is luxury.
Her speech does not infer anything close to racism. It is, like here, fairly conservative in its language and measured in its tone. Anyone who is willing to base their vote on these handful of words should be put on a poster with the heading “Really?!” in bold, italics AND underined lettering(making sure all graphic designers cringe).
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