January 1, 2010 - admin
Volume 36, Issue 1: A Touch of Class, with Layers of Race and a Sprinkling of Gender
First, the good news: President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next Justice of the US Supreme Court (by the time this appears in print, Judge Sotomayor will presumably have been approved and is now sitting on the US Supreme Court). A native of the Bronx, New York and the child of Puerto Rican parents she was the first non-white women to be so designated. Clearly, this nominee represents the same sorts of possibilities of a post-racial America embodied in the successful campaign of President Obama himself. It seemingly offers us a glimpse into the new world order in a multi-cultural nation run by people who will soon represent the ‘majority’ in this country (that is, whites will no longer be the majority category on official statistics). She is, like Obama, well educated, the product of the best elite academic institutions of this country, having achieved that accomplishment through natural intelligence, hard work, and over- coming the prejudices of the time. Her judicial record is squarely in the mainstream of the judicial rulings of the day. It would seem obvious that her nomination should be beyond reproach, her confirmation a foregone conclusion…
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