Why do we never get an answer?
When we’re knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war — The Moody Blues, “Question”
America is in pain; she is growing once again, trying to stretch the face of her legal mind to fit the people she serves and as always, there are those who would hold her back. I am referring to a portion of our population who are afraid of change. Whether you are a journalist or a blogger, use Twitter or are a politician, whether you are a conservative, a Republican, a Democrat or a flaming liberal like me, you want someone to hear your voice!
A mother lode of domestic and foreign problems has been dumped on President Obama since the election in November of 2008 and in trying to keep his promise to move us in a new fresh direction he has chosen Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be his first nominee for the Supreme Court. What a victory this will be for the American Latin community. I await her seating with hope and joy. This country has mixed views, to say the least, and I am afraid that racial hatred is rearing its ugly, hideous head.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was on twitter Monday calling Judge Sotomayor a racist because of a much publicized statement she had made in regards to how a Latina woman from an impoverished background might be able to interpret the law differently than her predominately English white male counterparts. I must ask, “What’s wrong with that?” Even my husband was not offended by Judge Sotomayor’s statement. The reasoning behind it is clear enough; she would bring a fresh eye to the court and as a Latina woman she would poses a certain empathy towards people that may be absent in others from a more privileged background. Here is Newt’s tweet: “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman’ new racism is no better than old racism.”
I found his generalization and taking of Judge Sotomayor words out of context not surprising, as I believe conservatives and the Republican Party to be desperate to regain their fleeting and tenuous hold on America’s psyche and that certain individuals in their ranks will say and do anything to accomplish this. Here is what Judge Sonia Sotomayor actually said in her 2002 speech at UC Berkeley: “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.”
I would like you to consider the video Race to the Bottom, which was compiled by Media Matters for America. I actually find the material and language used here to be so offensive that I do not want to type the words on my keyboard! Please judge for yourselves and decide what you think of these observations.
We are so sharply divided in this country right now and it is evident in almost every aspect of our lives. Nowhere more than when you read the online newspapers. Thanks to the wonders of the cyber-world we can now give instant feedback to whatever we read, think, or feel. Right this minute there are 2,140, and counting, comments under a story in the Huffington Post, with a headline reading “It’s Only Outrageous When She Says It!” The hot button topic of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is practically spilling out of the digital papers as blog after blog and report after report proclaim they have the freshest angle on her or the most information and statistics on her even the style section of the Huffington Post has a question and a little opinion poll to go with it titled “What kind of style will Judge Sotomayor bring to her court robes?”
From The New York Times to this article you’re reading right now we all want a piece of the story of the day. I am motivated to write about Judge Sonia Sotomayor after reading the most vile and hateful words describing the President’s pick. I want to counterbalance this whirlwind of words and pictures, facts and statistics with a message to tone down the rhetoric and politicization of this very able woman.
Rachel Maddow on MSNBC explains the attacks and criticisms against Judge Sotomayor by using “props.” She compares the makeup of the Supreme bench to a whiskey sour; the four Republicans are the sugar, the two Democrats are the lemon, and the two independent thinkers are the whiskey. This is going to be just one more fight in an already too long line of them amongst our political factions in the United States today and it is really sad that we don’t talk to each other anymore.
