Diversity of Opinion

President Barack Obama likes to make history. Yesterday Obama announced Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for Supreme Court Justice; Sotomayor, if confirmed by the Senate, will be only the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the first person of Latin descent. Within the first twenty-four hours of the announcement the conservative voices began to attack Sotomayor, and the attacks have little if anything to do with substance and everything to do with sexism and racism. However, most of the mainstream media and even most of the alternative media will not call these attacks what they are.

There have been the expected references to Judge Sotomayor being a liberal and an activist judge, and these labels would have been applied to whatever nominee President Obama would have announced. However, there have been questions raised about her intellect and her temperament, questions that are completely centered in sexism. From all of the usual suspects these questions have been raised about a woman with impeccable credentials, a woman that graduated with honors from two of the most prestigious universities in the country. None of these same questions where raised about any of the previous male nominees. Also, this idea of temperament has a mixture of both sexism and racism. Women who achieve higher positions of authority are often painted as less feminine, and as being overly aggressive. There is also the racial stereotype of the angry Latin woman, a stereotype that is often specifically perpetuated about Puerto Rican women.

Judge Sotomayor has also already been labeled as a racist, or even the ridiculous label of reverse racist, because of the Ricci v New Haven case in which the New Haven fire department through out promotion exams because it was deemed racial bias. There is also the quote that the conservatives are already repeating with regularity. Sotomayor said in 2001 that, “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.” That sound you heard was every conservative white man clinching his fist at the idea that a Latina could actually reach a better conclusion than them.

However, these attacks will likely be limited to the conservatives that are not elected to office, because it is going to be politically dangerous for the Republican Party to been perceived as attack the first nominee to the court of Latin decent. The GOP is already losing ground in every demographic, and the GOP that has been alienating the Hispanic electorate. Attacking her will also have an impact on with woman voters, which is among the largest group of people that have shifted away from the GOP. Judge Sotomayor is not going to face nearly the same type of criticism during her Senate confirmation that she will face from the conservatives in the media. That’s not to say that there will not be any opposition; there will be some conservative senators that will make noise. For the most part I think that the confirmation process will go relatively smooth, and it will be difficult to oppose someone with such obvious qualifications.

Perhaps the simplest reason to support Judge Sotomayor is that former Office of Legal Council (OLC) lawyer John Yoo opposes her nomination. Yoo suggest that that Sotomayor was only chosen because of her race, and that that she is undistinguished and could not be an intellectually leader. I think there is no better argument to confirm Sotomayor than the fact that someone who opposes her wrote, according to Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, “perhaps the most clearly erroneous legal opinion I have ever read.” John Yoo is the antithesis of the belief in the rule of law, and that the Constitution and the law cannot be bent to suit a political or any other agenda.

One of the most significant reasons to support Judge Sotomayor, besides her impeccable credentials, is diversity. The fact is that diversity is important and it is a necessary component to ensuring not only the effectiveness of the Supreme Court but any other court or legislative body. In fact diversity in fact should be a standard that we apply from the acceptance into a college to the hiring practices of an employer. There are two reasons why this is important. The first is diversity breads debate among people of different backgrounds and different perspectives, and this creates broader more complete conclusions. The second is that there is still persistent and entrenched racism, sexism, homophobia, and other prejudices in our society, and these cannot be overlooked as obstacles to minority groups.

The diversity of our leaders should represent the diversity of the American people. We have taken an important step in a long journey that is far from over.