Why is everyone so afraid of a wise Latina?

It’s pretty silly to me that people would try to deny that who you are has an effect on how you think. I resent that Sonia Sotomayor was made to eat her words about such factors as her race and gender affecting her judging. That’s perfectly valid, and I admire her for saying it to a bunch of white guys. It’s not humanly possible to separate yourself from your background. Understanding people’s backgrounds is the only way to truly engage them. The idea that judges should be some sort of robots, carrying out legal judgments as if they are not people, is ridiculous. Sotomayor has conveyed enormous respect for legal precedent, as a judge should. The criticisms of her as being a racist, deviating from the law to suit her own biases are ridiculous. In the much-lauded, but seldom inspected, recent Supreme Court overthrow of her affirmative action decision with respect to the New Haven firefighters, she was acting in accordance with higher precedent. The Supreme Court created a new precedent in its reversal.

Conservative criticism of Sotomayor shows that, while the party claims to be a post-racial one, (having a black chairman, having nominated their own Latino to the Supreme Court), they’re, as a party (and I know some individual members to be better than this), still tied to racial politics. And what does it even mean to be “post-racial”? Race still exists, so how can you be “post” it? Acknowledging that different peoples’ backgrounds lead them to different conclusions is important. That diversity of conclusions is important. Republicans using race as a token for their acceptance, but then refusing to acknowledge the very real effects race has on individual people and society as a whole, is just plain hypocritical and dishonest. Whether or not they know that (some definitely do), it’s a backwards approach to people that is ultimately going to cost them their constituency. The time when having all of the white people agree with you was enough to get done anything you wanted to in American politics is over. It’s not coming back.

And that’s a good thing.