Update: On Thursday, 16th July 2009, Professor Henry Gates, Jr. was arrested in his home, an apparent case of racial profiling. Just more evidence of the need for an authentic conversation about race. Gates’ daughter shared her father’s view in her column, My Daddy, the Jailbird.
As I followed the Sotomayor supreme court justice confirmation process, I was struck by several undercurrent, or rather, blatantly overt messages during and after the hearings. Here are a few:
- The explicit racist observations made by several members of the Judiciary Committee (especially Senators Sessions, McConnell, Graham) as they tried to paint Judge Sotomayor as someone whose decisions, over a 17-year career, were based on ‘Latina’ activism; or
- Laying the ‘reverse discrimination’ decision about the New Haven, CT firefighters solely in her lap rather than the Appellate body (you’d think Judge Sotomayor was the only Appellate judge!), or
- Pat Buchanan’s rant about how unfair it was that Judge Sotomayor was given an opportunity to obtain an Ivy League education over some other qualified white person (hey Pat, affirmative action only opens doors otherwise not open to women, non-whites. What you do with it is quite another and Sotomayor excelled!); or
- The sexist comments about temperament, mostly associated with women of power but rarely broached with respect to men.
Which is the most intriguing theme? I’m going to have to punt on this one since each stopped me in my tracks!
But, as stunned as I was to hear these views expressed so openly, I can’t help but acknowledge that these issues need to be discussed out loud. According to US Census Bureau projections, Hispanic has been and will continue as the fastest growing population segment in the United States. So, with a fair degree of certainty I say this, diversity in the United States is a reality that is here to stay.
On another note, a friend recently listed himself as ‘human out of Africa’ in a census form. I know it’s naive of me but I do imagine a day when human will be the only racial designation. What a cool dream!
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