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)

“Completely love it. Completely fit in,” said Bernardo Vargas, 20, and SMG Rising Junior about being an international student and an immigrant for at least four years at Boston University. Still, having been born in Monterrey Mexico, he told me the following story: “When the swine flu epidemic broke out, my boss called me to ask if I was feeling well, if maybe I had a cold or was coughing.” I asked Bernardo if he thought his boss only called because he was Mexican. Vargas didn’t hesitate for a second and answered: “Yes…. that is precisely the expression of America’s long time fear of the unknown….”

whole article

FINAL DRAFT

By Pedro Pizano June 7, 2009

“Completely love it. Completely fit in,” said Bernardo Vargas, 20, and SMG Rising Junior about his time as an international student at BU. Having been born in Monterrey, he expected to experience a certain amount of prejudice. “When the swine flu epidemic broke out, my boss [at BU] called me to ask if I was feeling well, if maybe I had a cold or was coughing.” I asked Bernardo if he thought his boss only called because Bernardo was Mexican. Bernardo didn’t hesitate for a second and answered: “Yes, that is precisely the expression of America’s long time fear of the ‘unknown’.” By unknown he is referring to the prejudices Americans have about immigrants. Recently, if you’re Mexican you’re supposed to have had contact with people who have swine flu and if you’re Colombian you will always have cocaine to sell. Right?

For BU students Melody Feo, 20, and Hector Oseguera, 21, daughter and son of former illegal immigrants and now naturalized American citizens, the ‘prejudice of the unknown’ has created other difficulties. They both grew up in neighborhoods that were primarily Hispanic, and like Bernardo, they have no problem fitting in although it has troubled them in certain episodes of their life. “I have never felt any pressure from anyone or anything about being an immigrant,” said Melody. She remembers, though, that when she was 8, she realized that she couldn’t participate in any of the extra-curricular activities at her elementary school because her parents were not legal residents of Parsippany, NJ. “It felt like a cold sadness that swept through the house. I was too young to understand why I couldn’t play with the other kids.” She now knows that this sadness was caused by her parent’s melancholy for a forsaken land and their silent acceptance of the trials they were enduring.

From these student’s experiences it seems that once they arrived to BU their trials were over. Boston University has, in the end, “one of the highest numbers of international students among American colleges and universities,” according to the Mission Statement for the Global Future written by the President’s council. And as such, it is a place where prejudices are confronted, differences are resolved and respect is learned towards other’s cultures.

The incoming freshman class for 2007, for example, was 68% white, 15% Asian, 7% international students, 7% Hispanic, and 2% black. And that is only the freshman class. In 2007, including graduate students and non-degree students, 12.8 % of the university-wide student population at BU was Hispanic. That means that were about 4,000 students that declared themselves as Hispanics. And that means Hector, Melody and Hector are part of a critical mass that everyday changes everybody’s prejudices about Latin American Immigrants.

Melody, Hector and Bernardo have always declared themselves as Hispanic though they are to all eyes and ears, American. They’ve never denied their culture, speak their mother tongue with perfect fluidity and the three of them want to go back to their country when they have finished their studies. Yet, Hector knows that many Americans are still not comfortable with the idea that the U.S has no official language though English is by default the “norm”. Some Americans feel the same discomfort when they feel that a part of somebody else’s culture is becoming part of what Americans consider absolutely American. For example Hector says that when he worked in a supermarket he never understood why Americans complained about the existence of a Spanish Aisle at supermarkets. Maybe those people need to come to Boston University, or maybe the U.S needs to become more like Boston University.