Posted on 06/04/2009 4:59:05 AM PDT by Tolik
America is intermarrying, integrating, and assimilating as never before.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has scolded Americans for being “cowards” and not talking more about race. Now, Holder is getting that “dialogue” with the recent controversy surrounding President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor.
Most of the furor surrounds statements on race by Sotomayor herself: “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 was clear enough. In a broad discussion about sex/race discrimination cases and their history, she stated that judges’ ethnicity and gender make them better or worse at what they do.
Sotomayor also once complained that, “We (Latinos) have only 10 out of 147 active circuit court judges and 30 out of 587 active district court judges. Those numbers are grossly below our proportion of the population.”
Aside from Sotomayor’s notion that federal jobs should be parceled out on the basis of race, what exactly does she mean in an America that is intermarrying, integrating, and assimilating as never before?
And why were the same people who now hold up Sotomayor’s background as a qualification for the Supreme Court so quick, when George W. Bush was president, to rally to deny Miguel Estrada a court-of-appeals judgeship?
When Sotomayor invokes racial exceptionalism — and her supporters privilege her Latina status — we enter a morass in which there is no consistent logic about either who qualifies as a minority deserving of special state consideraton or why any one group has claims over another.
Is minority status deserving of government redress defined by some sort of claim of membership in groups that suffered past bias inside the United States?
Hardly. The University of California system, for example, not so long ago worried about too many Asians on its campuses. Yet Japanese-Americans were once put in internment camps and Chinese immigrants denied civil rights. Had Asians lost their aggrieved status because per capita they were doing too well? And does that suggest that race ipso facto is no longer a hindrance to success?
Perhaps the logic of government-mandated diversity instead hinges not just on redressing historical discrimination, but also on considering present-day racial bias.
Again, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Arab-Americans, for example, don’t qualify for affirmative action, but they’re hardly immune to discrimination here in the U.S.
In truth, in the 21st-century United States we don’t know what race exactly is, or its exact role in our own success or failure, much less the reasons how and why it should count for special government consideration.
In a radically changing America, which immigrants from Mumbai, Muslim Arab-Americans, or destitute newcomers from Croatia will the government reward on the basis of their skin color, poverty, lack of English skills, or religion?
Who will prove to have the greater case for victimhood and government redress — the half-African graduate of prep school or the poorer, darker Palestinian daughter of an immigrant 7-11 storeowner?
Or should we revert to class — giving the child of the single, alcoholic, unemployed father preference over the daughter of a hardworking immigrant who built a successful business by working seven days a week?
To be the most fair, should we update rules of the Old Confederacy and have racial statisticians examine our DNA to see whether we were really are 1/16 this or that federally approved race? Sounds crazy, but sometimes that’s where it feels like we’re heading.
Just as the government now both regulates and runs General Motors, so it decides who is victimized and who is not, and then rewards (and therefore punishes) on the basis of race.
But again, 21st-century America is intermarried and mixed up. People are complex individuals, not cookie-cutter representations of their supposed tribe. The Balkans, Iraq, and Rwanda are not our models.
So, can we imagine Ivy League–educated Justice Sonia Sotomayor simply as a judge, no more, no less? Can the Senate, in its confirmation hearings for Sotomayor, vote up or down on her written record and expressed philosophy of jurisprudence?
They ought to leave it at that — and only that
There is nothing written in the US Constitution that requires the seating of judges or a Supreme Court Justice based on quotas or ethnicity. That's just another corrupt aberration of these hyphenates.
She is not an objective jurist. She is an "advocate" obsessed with redressing latino grievances from the bench. She is bent on destroying our freedoms as payback for all those Frito Bandito commercials.
We need to see her emails and phone records to determine who controls her and whether she has contacts with foreign governments.
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She is completely absent the necessary judicial temperament---the valuable "judicial gravitas." CBS Evening News pointed that up ...as well as her Achilles heel.......her obsession with latinoism.
REFERENCE CBS Evening News caught her offguard---visiting with Senators. She had clearly been coached------ CBS (bless 'em) explicitly pointed out that she and the Senators were mouthing the same language. Someone off-camera asked her if she was racist. Her visage quickly changed from a smiling senorita to that of a raging bull. CBS kept the camera trained on her. She was furious that gringos were not "respecting" her. Her lips actually moved but no sound came out.... Katie Couric's voice-over clearly noted that, as well.
SCENARIOS If Sonia/Soto says she is pro-life because of her religious faith......Catholic haters PP and Naral will have a cow. If she comes out pro/abortion, Rush can point out her hypocrisy (like fellow Catholics Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy who PROMOTE abortion).
Rush can then point out that Roe v. Wade can finally be overturned (based on the 14th amendment)......
Time to force people to face the facts.... Obama uses the term "Previable Fetuses" for aborted babies born alive.....lets show 'em "Previable Fetuses" w/ actual pictures and gruesome details of exactly what happens from p/b abortion.
Beg to differ. The Hispanic race is a verifiable race and a distinct culture. The Mexicans are a cross-section of indian tribes that have been closely linked with the Inuit of Alaska as well as the Spanish who, for a time conquered Mexico before disease forced them to abandon the country. This is why there are the primarily brown Mexicans who were descended from the indian tribes, and the white Mexicans who were descended from the Spanish Conquistadors.
South Texas was was not predominantly Hispanic, it was predominantly settled by whites from Germany, France and the Netherlands who migrated here via Pennsylvania and the Ohio valley. South Texas changed hands a number of times depending on which country thought they could control things the best.
The French arrived and are largely responsible for the missions that dominate South Texas but they eventually were overaken by the Spanish. The Spanish held on for as long as they could before ceding the territory to the Mexicans. While the Mexicans ostensibly controlled South Texas, they gave direct control of the territory to empresarios such as Stephen F. Austin, who was responsible for deciding which Americans or immigrants would be allowed to settle the land. This allowed a number of Germans to immigrate into South Texas and develop communities such as New Braunfels, Boerne and Fredricksburg.
After Texas defeated Santa Ana and gained its independence from Mexico, a number of original Mexicans remained in Texas to become what were then called "Texicans" (both Mexicans and Europeans were referred to as Texicans). After Texas was accepted into the Union in the 1840s, the Mexicans continued to immigate into Texas and joined the general migration of people from all walks of life migrating across the US.
Perfect! We split all royalties 50-50.
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