TheLoop21.com

By: Crystal P. Smith (follow this member)
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 00:00

President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for a Supreme Court seat Tuesday garnered mixed responses from the GOP and other bloggers in the Afrosphere. Sotomayor would be the first ever Supreme Court justice who is Hispanic, which some think comes into play in the criticism of her.

It's the usual argument though, "is she smart enough?" or "qualified enough?" — and then of course there's the concern that she's too liberal and would favor minorities in her rulings.

The "is she smart enough?" question is indicative of the assumption that minorities who do "make it" in our society were somehow handed a pass that they didn't deserve. And as for the "would favor minorities" argument, I hope so because, honestly, that would help make things just a bit more even.

There's a portion of the GOP making their apparent racism against Sotomayor very visible, and if they succeed in blocking the first Latina Supreme Court justice, it could either alienate the Hispanic members of their party or morph into outrage for these racially intolerant party members.

More importantly, the GOP's unofficial spokesman Rush Limbaugh called President Obama and Sotomayor reverse racists, a statement so ridiculous it makes me sick to my stomach.

"So here you have a racist. You might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist. And the libs, of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone, because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he's appointed one." — Rush Limbaugh

When it comes down to it, I think her criticizers are angry because she's exceeded the bar for a woman of color and could be one of the most powerful decision-makers in our country. It's so sad that at so many levels, she's being victimized because of her ethnicity and gender.

From Racialious: "Jeffrey Rosen admits that he hasn’t 'read enough of Sonia Sotomayor’s opinions to have a confident sense of them,' and he adds that he hasn’t 'talked to enough of Sonia Sotomayor’s detractors and supporters to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths.' Still, he’s comfortable putting into print anonymous evaluations of her character and intelligence, concluding that she’s possibly 'not that smart.' "

Yet, Sonia Sotomayor has the most diverse and extensive experience of any other Supreme Court justice. If she were a white male, that would surely get her seated.

Crystal P. Smith is TheLoop21.com's editor. She writes the Inside the Loop and Across the Afrosphere blogs.