The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor in the context of Hispanic immigration

“Be judged not by the color of your skin, but by the content of your character” Martin Luther King Jr.

By Pedro Pizano
July 21, 2009

At the hearings to confirm Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme court it seems the issue is not her views on some of the most pressing issues of our times (like abortion or the capital punishment), but on her racial background.

In any case, the law (and the woman behind the bench), is supposed to have no race or skin-color. Yet, it cannot be denied that cultural diversity is useful to put a case in context rather than to create prejudice for or against it.

The arguments against Sotomayor’s confirmation that have been made by die-hard republicans and, of course, the NRA, are based on a comment, a ruling, and her 12 years as a board member of Latino Justice, (formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF)), almost as if her 17 years of experience as a federal judge didn’t count, nor her top-of-her-class honors from Princeton Law.

‘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,” Sotomayor said in a 2001 speech. A comment which have led many, as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Al.), to say that she’s a ‘reverse racist.”

This would mean, at least for Republicans, that if Sotomayor were to be confirmed, she would use her bully pulpit to favor Hispanic and other minorities.

Sotomayor recently explained what she had meant by her “wise Latina” phrase. “I used a rhetorical figure that didn’t work. It was unfortunate because it gave the impression that I believe that personal experiences shape the outcome of a case but that is clearly not what I do as a Judge.” “The goal of that speech,” she continued, “ was to motivate students, lawyers, and Hispanics to understand how their personal experiences enrich the law… Life experience has to influence you, we are not robots that see proofs without feeling. We have to recognize our feelings and put them aside. That was what my speech [back in 2001] said.”

Sen. Sessions, who’s also the highest ranking Republican in the Senate Judiciary Committee, said those words said back in 2001 were “completely the opposite of what you are saying now.” Sen. Sessions is also afraid that her judicial “philosophy” will “blossom” in the highest seat in the nation where she will not be subject to revision from a higher court.

These arguments made against the nomination by the Republicans are futile since they themselves have recognized that they do not have enough votes to impede her confirmation by the senate. Even more, Sen. Sessions, who led the attacks against Sotomayor, has a history of ‘insensitivity” in regards to racial issues. Some reports even say that during his nomination hearings, Session said jokingly that that the Ku Klux Klan wouldn’t be as bad if some of its members didn’t smoke Marijuana.

So, in short, Republicans are using the hearings to advance their own agenda with no regard as to what the purpose of the hearings are in the first place. The purpose of their questions against Sotomayor don’t intend to prove whether she’s ready for the supreme court or not, they just want to gain points with their voters. Not that they even need it, of course. In the case of Sen. Sessions (R.-Al), he was reelected with 64% of the vote in 2008. Then again, Alabama is a state where Obama (the first African American president ever) only got 10% of the white American voters.

The problem lies in the fact that Hispanics are still perceived of being of a lower class in a country which paradoxically proclaims itself to be classless. The influx of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America who hold what some people call “menial jobs”, has created a racial prejudice. And while prejudices serve as self-defense mechanisms in emergency situations (i.e. crossing the street when a hooded man with baggy pants approaches you in a dark alley), once in a while someone like Sotomayor comes along, someone who’s ready to prove everyone wrong and become, without doubt, the first Hispanic ever in the supreme court.

Image taken from here.

Some facts and quotations taken from Maribel Hastings’ article in Spanish. (Read it here)