What I do object to and what I find humorous is what I assume was her attempt and now other’s attempts to portray Sotomayor as “a Wise Latina Woman”. Sotomayor as a graduate of an elite Catholic high school, Princeton University and Yale Law School has far more in common with Roberts, Alioto, and the Presidents Bush then she does with any Wise Latina Woman. To use Pete Seeger’s terminology she has gone through the establishment’s educational system and was spit out in her “little box”. In her case she was spit out in one of the little liberal activist box – albeit one with brown packaging and an Hispanic name on the label. Sotomayor probably fits more into the “American white male” mold than did my second generation Polish father with a high school education.

MM, you bring up Clarence Thomas. How many of these same people who are praising Sotomayor because she would bring the perspective of “a Wise Latina Woman” to the bench fought Clarence Thomas although he would have brought the perspective of an “African American raised by his poor share cropper grandfather to the bench”. If Sotomayor was a member of Catholic Altar Society or a Pro-life group many of her current supporters would be fighting her tooth and nail even though she may have belonged to both of these groups because of her ethnic background.

Simply stated, supporters of Thomas and Sotomayor don’t really care about diversity on the bench. They care about the judicial decisions the nominees will render and everything else is just window dressing.

Rather, the most intriguing parts of the speech were the references to the possible “inherent physiological” differences between the races which might involve “basic differences in logic and reasoning.” I wish that someone on the committee would use their time to explore her thoughts on this subject in more detail, rather than simply rehashing the one remark over and over.

Note not in every case, but every “major” case. One wonders how he came to that evaluation.

As far the racist accusation goes, whether some people recognize that being white and male is as much as an identity as Latina is irrelevant. She asserted that her identity and experiences would help her render a better judgment than a white male. Whether you call it racism or not, it’s a fairly bold statement which needs to be challenged, as it assumes the Latina background to in fact be richer than the white male background (hence the better decisions).

There have been zero priests since the founding of the Catholic church that have not been males. ;-)

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Summer/full-Bacevich.html

If American Catholics’ refusal to reconsider the nature of their country’s foreign policy in light of recent events AND in light of the moral reflection shone on it by this great Catholic novelist so many years ago doesn’t PROVE they are imbued by the vulgarized Calvinist notion that they are “saved” by their country’s “good intentions,” I don’t know what does.

However, I will have to admit that I am coming to regret my support of Obama: the “change” I wanted isn’t forthcoming, and the Repugnant Party in America isn’t any better. I think I’ll remain an expatriate now forever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/opinion/15dowd.html

I see movement conservatism’s agitation against Sotomayor as being aimed at the subset of their base that fears a racial backlash from long-oppressed minorities.

I heard a remarkable interview on NPR where a white woman in Appalachia was describing her fear that blacks would “get revenge” on white Americans if Obama were to win the election. (I hope she feels reassured by the ensuing peace.)

There is a darker piece of the conservative coalition that sees the world as a competition between races, and any gain by hispanics is perceived as an automatic loss to whites. Such zero-sum thinking is a pretty strange way of viewing the world, in my view, but it is a view that some have.

This is from a mailing I subscribe to that sends talking points to right-wing bloggers. It is instructive:

The Hate Crime Bill – Obama’s Latest Assault on Equal Justice: While America’s attention is focused on the Sotomayor hearings, the Senate Democrat leadership, at Barack Obama’s behest, is about to sneak through another brutal assault on small-d democratic sensibilities even more insidious than the “wise Latino woman,” herself.

Notice the narrative there: Obama is “assaulting equal justice” by having the Senate “sneak through” a bill that would make assaulting someone due to their race a worse crime than assaulting someone where race is not a factor.

The idea (as I understand it) behind hate crimes laws is that assaulting or harassing someone because of their race is wrong because it undermines, in a de facto way, the right of the victim to live/work/play where he wants. It is NOT just a simple assault; there is also a message being sent that the victim’s Kind Does Not Belong Here, which profoundly undermines “equal justice”.

Yes.