A wise Latina

In my first post, I marveled at the curious game of trading places that has gripped the world. Middle Englanders, who had voted for the openly racist British National Party (BNP), blamed their extreme choice on disaffection with the political process. Their plight, they argued, was wrought by immigrants and the recession. And no one was standing up for white people.

In the USA, Obama’s choice of Hispanic judge Sonia Sotamayor for the US Supreme Court has met with howls of protest from conservative white men. The discussion at her hearing for confirmation by the US Senate has largely centred on speeches she made off the bench. In what almost seems tongue in cheek, she remarked in those speeches that the “richness of [her] experiences” as a “wise Latina” makes her as good a judge, if not better than, a white male counterpart. Her detractors argue that this discloses an inherent bias on race. What if a white southern senator had said that his racial origin uniquely qualifies him for public office? Conservative loud-mouth Rush Limbaugh has called her an “angry” “reverse racist.” For this camp, Sotamayor is the embodiment of repugnant identity politics.

Judge Sotamayor has explained that her comments were intended to inspire minority students thinking about a career in the law. She urged her critics to look at her nearly three decades as a big city prosecutor, corporate litigator, trial and appellate judge and appreciate the “fidelity to the law” that she has demonstrated in all these roles.

I am watching with amusement, as republican senators deploy the civil rights ideal of a “colour blind” society to negate any effort to countenance difference based on race. The reasoning seems to be that if Obama and Sotamayor can rise to the top, considerations of race are now passé. In the world as conservatives have re-imagined it, Sotamayor need not exhort any racial group through rhetorical flourishes, since all shows of preference are odious. A resurgent call for objective, neutral and equal (meaning, the same) standards, becomes the protection of newly endangered white men.

I hope that Judge Sotamayor continues to make similar speeches as a Supreme Court justice. It is important to encourage women and coloured folk into roles for which they are under-represented. The project to correct historical disadvantage of minorities is still incomplete and requires self-identification and positive action. Until it becomes trite for Latina women to become Supreme Court justices, the likes of Sonia Sotamayor will have a moral obligation to hark back to their roots and rally those who are left behind.