We need Hockey Hair on the Supreme Court!
"Out with the Burritos, in with the Crêpes Suzette !"
Posted on 06/01/2009 8:54:52 AM PDT by Tolik
The Sotomayor nomination — since the media focused on her ethnic profile rather than her solid credentials — has had the unintended effect of reminding the nation how strange the politics of racial identity have become, especially in a society where social status and material well-being are not necessarily predicated on being "white" (cf. per capita incomes of many Asian minorities), and the notion itself of "race" is now problematic with so many Americans of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 racial heritage. Are we really to believe that Geraldo Rivera's high profile on Fox News lends "pride" to those who are of 1/2 Puerto Rican background, or does he resonate as Gerald Friedman with the Jewish community for his half-Jewish ancestry? Or is he just Geraldo, whose background is inmaterial?
One wonders whether affirmative action and diversity preferences are any more predicated on past collective suffering? If so, why has the UC university system in the past tried to find insidious ways of limiting Asian "overrepresentation" (given ample bias against Chinese and Japanese), or why is a Barack Obama, of half-African ancestry, a beneficiary of efforts to offer recompense to those of the African-American experience?
Or perhaps the problem instead is supposedly present individual discrimination? Yet does a Justice Sotomayor encounter today more bias than does a dark-skinned Punjabi, Egyptian Copt, or Syrian-American — members of groups that do not warrant special consideration and preference? If the past prejudice of the Mexican-American experience justifies race-based preference, to what degree do other Hispanics — Cubans, Brazilians, Spaniards, Costa Ricans — piggy-back and find themselves counted as "minorities" to meet "diversity goals", as if a university is relieved that no federal agency checks to see whether a well-off, blue-eyed Spaniard immigrant like José de la Cruz is actually not Mexican-American.
No need to cite the obvious — a Travis Thornberry living in Bakersfield, part of the Oklahoma Diaspora, poor and without educated parents, is entitled to no affirmative-action execmptions, but perhaps an illegal alien who crossed the border yesterday does become a "minority" by the very loose association with the Mexican-American experience? So we use increasingly baffling circumstances to dictate who and who is not deserving of special consideration.
In theory, the children of a Eric Holder and Colin Powell could prove racially-based handicaps that call for government intervention while, say, far poorer children of Punjabi and Arab-Americans parentage — in some cases more readily identifiable as non-white — could not. From past experience in the university, I can attest that the darker-skinned Mexican-American student of mixed parentage who spoke Spanish, was poor, but had an Anglo father and no desire for tribal identification — resulting in a name like a Joe Baker — had a harder claim than a lighter-skinned Latina, whose Mexican fides were on the paternal side and who sought such bumper-sticker identification, such as a Yolanda Trevino. The scoundrel Ward Churchill reminded us how such faux-identities can be constructed for careerist purposes.
In short, with so many races, so much intermarriage, so much mixing-up through popular culture, so much disconnection between class, status, and race — and so much evidence from Iraq, the Balkans, and Rwanda about the perniciousness of tribalism — the industry of racial identity should have long ago been shut down, especially since it is often championed by white elites, who, not putting their own children in the public schools and not living in racially mixed neighborhoods (both very concrete ways of helping the "other"), seem to find psychological atonement in advocating diversity preferences, while assuming their own wealth, connections, and education ensure their own privileged offspring the same exemptions. The children of someone like a Ted Kennedy, after all, enjoyed affirmative action long before it was predicated on race.
Seeking a racial identity in "diversity" has become like Marxism in the old Soviet Union — a doctrine that everyone praises, while privately realizing that it has devolved into a useful tool for careerist advancement.
When Words Don't Mean Anything [Victor Davis Hanson]
Rather than an attempt to defend empirically Sotomayor's suggestion that Latinas are superior, in the judicial sense, to white men, we have been given a variety of postmodern contexts, constructing what she "really" meant: She was merely talking about the advantages of poverty that she thinks she has experienced that are not true of white men; she was only "joking"; she was making an intricate case for diversity, etc. — any explanation other than the natural one that was elaborated on later in her diatribe, namely that she believes the color and gender of a person impart wisdom or less than wisdom.
With the advent of Obamaworld, the centrist veneer sometimes rubs off the race/class/gender/religion talk and we see the fundamentalism in its essence — in the impromptu moments of the campaign it was Michelle's "mean country" and first-time pride in the U.S., Obama's "typical white person," Pennsylvania clingers, and original contorted defense of Reverend Wright, then there was Eric Holder's "cowards" outburst, and now Sotomayor's Latina tribalism.
In each case, once the race/class/gender animosity is revealed, there is a brief hesitation to see how well the media will come to the rescue and "contextualize" the remark, and when that fails there is the obligatory qualifier "maybe not the best way of putting it," "wrong word," "if I had to say it over, I'd . . ." The point being that, in the D.C. gotcha culture, these are never gotchas due to the race, gender, or class of the perpetrator (sort of like the schizophrenic attitude toward plagiarism that exempts a Maureen Dowd, or Joe Biden, or intolerance of supernatural religion that ignores an Arianna Huffington's John-Roger or Hillary séances with Eleanor Roosevelt).
I think the unifying explanation is that such wonderful people either simply are incapable of racialist remarks, or that the good that they otherwise stand for so overshadows the embarrassments as to make them not embarrassments at all.
Give it a rest!
What do you mean ‘posted already?'
I never saw it before, and I’m the center of the universe!.
Didn’t you get the memo?”
Miguel Estrada.
When my daughter was in Georgetown, she unconsciously walked through an African rally she was unaware of in 1994 in the middle of the campus. Since she 5-2, not African and she stopped the proceedings cold, it became one of her funniest (to us) College experiences.
(cough, cough) Cornell (cough, cough).
Actually, you should have gone with "Rosario" or just "Rosa" ..... tonier, you know. Like avoiding certain English names, like Pearl, Muriel, Mildred, Polly, Molly, etc. -- "fishwife" names.
It would count later on, when your CEO is considering VP candidates.
...Check post #7 for the links...
OK, you have the rights for the action figures, but I get the Bobble-Heads, including the automotive aftermarket kit with the velcro stand-up patch. OK?*
By the way, both you and VHD are cruel to not realize that Sonia Sotomayor was viciously discriminated against in her efforts to become the NBA's first female Hispanic player.
*Affirmative Action Minority Set Aside.
My people were cruelly oppressed by the Romans for centuries! Racist!
CC:
Geraldo Rivera
Okra Winfree
Michelle Obama
"Cold," is the right word for your daughter's hegemonic display of White Supremacy! I am forced to conclude that it was her upbringing by a patriarchal, binary gender normative, imperialist, capitalist family that caused this shocking display of racism.
You should add that this road is one hell of a lot rockier if you are not dealing with the très droles Quebecois, who have so gracefully played this silly game for over 300 years.
And how come there are no transplanted Maine or Upstate New York Canucks or Quebecers on the Supreme Court? What, Francophobic discrimination?
Tabernac, tu as raison! Te remerci l'astuce! For too long have my people been restricted to the NHL!
We need Hockey Hair on the Supreme Court!
"Out with the Burritos, in with the Crêpes Suzette !"
They might scream louder if the Quebecers were taking over New York and Massachusetts in the manner of LA and South Texas. Or like the Goth scene in Toronto. It takes people in different ways...
European females, generally speaking, are more feminine.
Whether that's just cultural or something deeper, well...perhaps. It tends to be true from Firenze to Stockholm.
You could come up with some pretty good conservative arguments for smaller states like Quebec. Perhaps establishing diplomatic relations with Aztlán sometime in the future.
French is fine for Quebec. English in the U.S. Until it becomes a Third World country. That's not really about Quebecers or Bretons. Jack Kerouac would have made a fine Supreme Court Justice or President.
Michael Savage was right: an entire generation of capable white men was sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.