Latina pride presents challenge and opportunity for Sotomayor

McClatchy Newspapers ^ | June 5, 2009 | Michael Doyle

[The KG9 Kid]

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor says she has a "Puerto Rican soul," and that says a lot about her.

By her own reckoning, Sotomayor offers more than just a different complexion as the first Hispanic nominee to the high court. Rather, she's long stressed her distinctive ethnic identity, how it's been shaped and — at times — what it might mean for her jurisprudence.

"My Puerto Rican soul was nourished each weekend that I visited and played in abuelita's house," Sotomayor told a New Haven, Conn., audience in October 1998, referring to her grandmother.

Like other Supreme Court groundbreakers before her, Sotomayor now must balance uniqueness with conformity. She'd bring a new face, but wear the same robe and interpret the same Constitution and laws. At times, she's accentuated rather than smoothed over potential differences, reflecting America's longtime vacillation between the virtues of assimilation and the value of diversity.

"Although I am an American, love my country and could achieve its opportunity of succeeding at anything I worked for," Sotomayor told the Hispanic National Bar Association in May 1996, "I also have a Latina soul and heart, with the magic that carries."

"It's definitely going to be a challenge," said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and an expert on Latino politics. "This is something she will be asked about."

[The KG9 Kid]

This article originally appeared on June 5th and contains quotes that we already know about Sotomayor. This one made me roll my eyes over and over.

I personally don't loathe this candidate and am resigned to the fact that the President will probably get her seated over the top of whatever Republican objection there is.

I suppose we can expect that every time a case reaches the US Supreme Court, we'll have to get used to one-ninth of the decision that's handed down sounding and smelling like the skirt-ruffling song and dance number 'America' from 'West Side Story'.

I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev'rything free in America
For a small fee in America!

[Lizavetta]

I simply don't understand this racial pride crap.

Who here is PROUD of being white? It's like being proud of having curly hair or being a native Californian.

[exist]

It's like being proud of being a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan. Guess what, YOU'RE FAT AND YOU'RE WATCHING FROM YOUR COUCH. YOU NEVER GOT TO SLEEP WITH ANY GROUPIES.

Same thing with ethnicity man honestly how is it that you have anything at all to do with somebody else's hard work. Like I keep hearing Arabs invented ZERO or something. Are you serious? That guy's descendants are probably selling cigarettes on the street right now and they're telling me about the number Zero.

And honestly the same goes for anything else. You're just you. This Sotomayor blah blah blah with her roots and her whatever. She's an empty skirt who was reading Pinocchio in college.

[RedStateGuyTrappedinCT]

Let's try an experement: she was a member of the National Council of La Raza, :The Klan which bills itself as the nation's largest Latino Caucasian civil rights group.

Is there any question on her nomination if the above were the case? For Christ's sake! She belongs to a group called THE RACE do you think she can be impartial? If someone advertises their racist views I tend to take them at their word, they're a racist.

[ViLaLuz]

Pride goeth before a fall.

[OldArmy52]

She is proud to be a racist and sexist.
God help her if she was a Republican.
Only Dems are approved to be racists and sexists.

[The KG9 Kid]

Since Marbury vs. Madison, it's been engraved in stone -- literally, in fifteen inch high gilded letters on the outside wall of the US Supreme Court building -- that the US Constitutions means whatever the US Supreme Court says it means:

Is it too much to ask that the justices merely interpret the original meaning of the US Constitution without the various justices mitigating it with their own childhood background experiences?

You don't see Thomas getting all 'Soul Brother' on us, or Scalia acting all Sicilian and 'Mama Mia!' and talking about Ziti and Scungilli, or even Ginsberg singing a shtetl 'O, Mein Papa' number from 'Yentl' in the style of Barbra Streisand, or Chief Justice Roberts saying that his 'whitebread and mayonnaise with a glass of milk on a paper plate' background makes him more qualified that any Latina in rendering a decision.

... So why should we take that guff from Sotomayor?

Otherwise, we might as well just hang it up and let J-Lo on the US Supreme Court if it's all become an ethnic popularity contest.

[lilylangtree]

You got that right. She’s a racist and actively participates in reverse discrimination when the opportunity presents itself.

[BusterBear]

What’s a “Puerto Rican soul” ? Does she mean all Puerto Ricans think alike and have similar traits? What’s a “Latina soul, with all the magic that conveys?” Is there a Jewish soul or a Black soul or an Aryan soul? This sounds like racialist literature that was prominent at one time in Europe, particularly in Germany.

[MissDairyGoodnessVT]

when AA (affir act) babies they grow up they have a tendency to romanticize their background