When President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, I was supremely unimpressed. At the time, people thought it was racism, but that’s how they usually reacted to anything that troubled their tender multicultural sensibilities. I was not allowed to critique the woman who called herself a “wise Latina.” But my suspicion of the nomination went beyond that. Sotomayor’s resume was relatively thin, even though she had an Ivy pedigree. She was not a well-respected judge on the lower federal bench, and had a habit of being a bit of a bully. The woman had a bad attitude. Here’s part of what I wrote even before she was confirmed in 2009:
“She's nominally qualified, even though her performance at the hearings this week was less than impressive. The GOP got her to disavow her "wise Latina" comment, she tiptoed around the empathy controversy, and she avoided giving anything but marshmallow answers on abortion, the death penalty and other hot-button topics. The wise Latina became the cautious Latina.
But apparently, for President Obama and his party, the most important thing is that she is, in fact, Latina.”
You can read the whole column here.
I continue to believe that the motivating factor for Obama was the now-justice’s ethnicity, just as I believe that Sandra Day O’Connor was picked for her gender and Thurgood Marshall (and likely Clarence Thomas) were picked in large part to break down racial barriers. And there is nothing wrong in considering the gender, race or ethnicity of a person as an “additional” factor when deciding their qualifications for the court. But these days, and in those days as well, these epidermal considerations were given far too much importance, which led to the whole “wise Latina” fiasco.
When you set yourself up as being particularly qualified or worthy because of something over which you have no control, you can expect to be criticized for it when you expose actual mediocrity. And Sotomayor showed that, in spades (and yes I used that phrase knowing full well that in this context it might seem inappropriate,) during the oral arguments this week in the Mississippi abortion case.
From the bench, Sotomayor suggested that fetuses do not feel pain, that the new justices on the court were political hacks, that there was likely going to be a stench arising from the bench if she didn’t get her way (namely a decision striking down the Mississippi law) and then made this comment when the Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart was arguing in favor of his state’s law:
“How is your interest anything but a religious view?”
She then went on, in a very emotional voice to ask “The state is saying to these women (who are denied abortions after 15 weeks) that we can choose to not only physically complicate your existence, put you at medical risk, make you poorer by the choice, because we believe…what?”
The absolute disdain in which this woman holds people of faith, not to mention medical professionals who have provided proof that fetuses can feel pain before 15 weeks (calling it “junk science”) is an example of a person bereft of judicial temperament, dignity, respect for the tribunal and, dare I say it, empathy. This woman, who was touted as the justice who would bring her own heritage and profound insight and perspective to a court of primarily white men has shown herself to be unworthy of the position she holds. She is, to be quite clear, a political activist in black robes.
As a pro life woman, a Catholic, an attorney and someone who is also proud of my heritage, I am actually quite happy that Sonia Sotomayor finally showed her “mano.” We can use her as an example, in the future, to dispense with this concern for diversity, and just admit that a partisan is a partisan, regardless of the language she uses to prove that particularly cogent point.
"dispense with this concern for diversity" yes!
You nailed it.
Probably the most fluid argument I've heard against this Wise Latina's absurdity.
Great subject matter with so many secondary issues tied nicely together.
Brava Signorina.