Is Sonia Sotomayor Really The First Hispanic Nominated To The Supreme Court?
May 27, 2009 4 Comments
Let me just say at the get-go that I do not understand why being Hispanic, or White, or Black, or any other race would make someone more or less qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. However, the racist media seems to always bring up someone’s race, and I feel the need to respond to something that I have seen quoted several times.
Numerous articles I have been reading have been saying that Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Really?
Benjamin Cardozo, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
I am sure they were repeating what was in the press release in order to get a story out quickly. However, I heard some disagreement from a conservative radio talk show host yesterday. He was asking about Benjamin Cardozo, a justice appointed by President Hoover.
Cardozo reportedly had Portuguese ancestry, with his forefathers being forced to flee the Iberian Peninsula due to the Spanish Inquisition. You see, his family was not Roman Catholic. They were Jewish.
Does this Jewish ancestry mean he was not Hispanic? I don’t expect the liberal media to provide an answer. It does not fit into their racial identity politics.
For more detail on this, visit the following article: Dissing Benjamin Cardozo?
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I am Portuguese American and I do not consider myself hispanic no one in my family has ever used that term and neither does a majority of portuguese americans.
Label “hispanic”
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/defining-hispanic.html
The Census Bureau added the “Hispanic” query at the last minute at the insistence of President Nixon, who astutely saw the large number of Mexican-Americans in his native California as an indicator that Hispanics were becoming an important voting bloc.
Today, except at the Library of Congress and the Small Business Administration, the consensus tends to be that Portuguese-Americans are not Hispanic. “I personally do not classify Portuguese under the `Hispanic’ or `Latino’ label, and I would say the majority [of Portuguese-Americans] do not as well,” says Jason Moreira, executive assistant of the Portuguese American Leadership Council of the United States.
Stop with the label nonesense and get back to the issues.All supreme court judges should be voted in by the people!!
Sonia Sotomayor
2001 lecture at the University of California-Berkeley. Referring to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s saying that “a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,” Sotomayor said,
“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.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/SCOTUS/story?id=7685284&page=1
Do you not see that quote by her is the real problem?and blog worthy than her being “first hispanic”
And because of this my feeling is Republicans and Democrats have failed this country!instead of talking about real issues that effect all LEGAL americans the rats scramble for nonsense topics.
http://www.ronpaul.com (one of the last real Americans )limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies!!!!!
Not Hispanic,
You have raised several good points. The word “Hispanic” can be used in different ways, with varying degrees of meaning. While we can debate whether Brazilians, and others of Portuguese descent should be considered “Hispanic”, it would not alter any individual’s qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court.
I agree with you that these “labels” put on candidates and nominees are nothing but a distraction in the political process. The reason I broke down and did this blog post about it, is that my local newspaper did a story on how local “Hispanics” were reacting to a “Hispanic” being nominated. This is just bringing race into a debate, where it otherwise would not be. In addition, the historical meaning of “Hispanic” is lost on most of the population. This includes most of those who self-identify as “Hispanic” as well.
Judge Sotomayor has made some questionable comments and decisions in her career. The Judiciary Committee will hopefully ask some questions in regards to the statement you cited in your comment. In the end, if it is strictly a partisan vote, the Democrats will see her confirmed. If she is not confirmed, it will be because she causes a split in the Democratic Senate votes. Time will tell if she makes it through the confirmation process.
Jason Raines
In my honest opinion you fell for the distraction.
Just because your local newspaper did a story on how local “Hispanics” were reacting to a “Hispanic” being nominated is not an exucse.It just tells me even you Jason Raines fell for the hook and bait of not focusing on the real issue of whether of Judge Sotomayor competent enough.
Not Hispanic, I always appreciate when people want to start giving honest opinions. Thank you for your honesty.
While I have opinions about the beliefs our Supreme Court justices should hold, it is up to the President to make the appointments. The Senate will have confirmation hearings. The process is just starting.
As you point out, I did not speak of Sotomayor’s competence. There is a reason for that. She was appointed to the bench in 1992, by the elder George Bush. She has more experience than other prospective appointees have had. If she is not confirmed, it won’t be because of competence. How she interprets the Constitution should be of larger concern.
I will likely be blogging about this in the future. In the meantime, if the media wants to throw words like “Hispanic” around, they should know how it means different things to different people. However, they don’t really care about that, they just care about pushing a liberal agenda. That’s what I was getting at.