The elephant in the room:

Get ready for some blunt language.

There has been a lot of discussion about Sonia Sotomayor's remark:

“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."

Here's how I see it. That remark by Sotomayor is the kind of statement a Latina would make if she felt there was ongoing animus against people like her. Racism, in other words.

Now as much as I think that many while males are perfectly able to reach as good a conclusion as any Latina, the fact is that hostility towards Latinos and women is still out there and in significant numbers. The Republican reaction to her nomination (and remark above) is clear evidence for that. And if it's at the level we are experiencing right now in 2009, you can be sure the racism was more pervasive in decades past - when Sotomayer was in college and later in her legal career.

What I find odd is that Sotomayor's statement is being portrayed as an homage to identity politics, instead of a reaction to long-term discrimination. And the Republican response is being portrayed as "foolish politics", instead of an indicator that this country, to a significant degree, is biased against Latinos and women.

But it appears that in this country we're not supposed to assert that racism is still a part of the social dynamic. And as a result we don't say out loud what's really going on.

To clarify. I don't like identity politics at all. That's why I'm a liberal Republican (yes, you can laugh) and not a Democrat. My initial reaction to Sotomayor's remark was that she was peddling in identity politics. But as the Republican onslaught kept going, and growing, it became clear that identity politics was too narrow an assessment. That something worse was in play, and that was racism.

CODA: Just to clear the air. I'm not a strong supporter of Sotomayer, but she'll do fine. I think she's a bit of a loudmouth and might be abrasive with colleagues on the court, but I don't really care much if Alito and Roberts find her hard to handle. My main concern with liberal justices is that they have long expected life spans.


posted by Quiddity at 5/30/2009 09:13:00 AM