The Public Interest

Julian Sanchez:

“Look, it’s not racist to oppose a Latina judicial nominee, or to oppose affirmative action, or to point out genuine evidence of ethnic bias on the part of minorities. What we’re seeing here, though, is people clinging to the belief that Sotomayor has to be some mediocrity who struck the ethnic jackpot, that whatever benefit she got from affirmative action must be vastly more significant than her own qualities, that she’s got to be a harpy boiling with hatred for whitey, however overwhelming the evidence against all these propositions is.  This is really profoundly ugly. Like Yglesias, I don’t think I’m  especially sensitive to stuff like this, or particularly easily moved to anger, but I’m angry. I don’t think Republican pundits really appreciate the kind of damage they’re probably doing, for no reason I can discern given the slim odds of actually blocking the nomination. Which, perhaps, goes to Sotomayor’s point: They really have no idea how they sound to anyone else.”

& Anonymous Liberal points out:

“As far as credentials go, Sotomayor is virtually identical to the last Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito. They went to the same undergraduate school, Princeton (where Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude). They both went to the nation’s top law school. And they’ve had successful law careers that led to successful tenures as federal Appeals Court judges. But somehow because Sotomayor is of Puerto Rican descent as opposed to Italian descent, she is somehow less qualified. That’s nonsensical and insulting on several levels. Moreover, these same conservatives bristle as the suggestion that Clarence Thomas was less qualified than others for the job of Supreme Court Justice. He went to Yale, after all.”

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