Señorita Ruth

Judging from your response, you’re (still) the racist…

The Repub­li­can reac­tion to the nom­i­na­tion of Sonia Sotomayor is pre­dictable and equally dis­ap­point­ing. I am baf­fled by their knee-jerk reac­tions. I learned how to con­trol that habit after I got mar­ried and to put up with some­one else’s opin­ion and way of doing things on a daily basis. Yet, it appears that the recur­sive advances made by this coun­try in socio-cultural mat­ters over­whelms the con­ser­v­a­tive right every sin­gle time. I fail to under­stand why they can’t take things in stride. They count on a sim­i­lar stride from oth­ers when they want the coun­try to amble in their direc­tion. Remov­ing reg­u­la­tions from banks, mort­gage lenders and other finan­cial insti­tu­tions? Sure! Buy­ing into the false notion of “clean coal” so that we may con­tinue to resist an energy par­a­digm shift? All it took was some TV ads. Accept a his­panic woman into the Supreme Court? HOLY SHIT ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?

For­give the expli­tives, but you get the point more clearly that way. That was the reac­tion of the pun­dits, talk­ers and jig­gly ones on the right. I’ve heard some of the most out­ra­geous claims made against her as a result, includ­ing that of reverse racist. I become truly con­cerned when such notions and phrases begin to be tossed about care­lessly by those who ben­e­fit from their nor­mal­iza­tion and accep­tance in the social dia­logue. It’s a con­ve­nient cover behind which they receive reprieve from hav­ing to actu­ally work out the train of thought that proves otherwise.

The term itself is a red her­ring. It implies that is an ide­ol­ogy held by a minorty group that rec­i­p­ro­cates the ide­ol­ogy held by the major­ity. How­ever, racism exists across all of the social and cul­tural strata. One does not have to reverse it in any way for it to be less toxic an approach to life and oth­ers. To use the term reverse racism is to fur­ther entrench the racist atti­tude of the per­son mak­ing that claim. The pan-hispanic expe­ri­ence encom­passes a wide spec­trum of real­i­ties and beliefs. Sotomayor’s affil­i­a­tion with La RAZA means some­thing dif­fer­ent to her than the foun­da­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion meant to its founders. Yet, it’s easy enough to assume a racist atti­tude from her affil­i­a­tion with the orga­ni­za­tion, even if nei­ther her nor the founders truly felt that the browns were bet­ter than the whites (I am recoil­ing away from myself for hav­ing used such sim­plis­tic terms– but sim­plic­ity must be embraced in these cases). While I per­son­ally refrain from offi­cial affil­i­a­tions like that one for myself because of the com­pli­cated cul­tural cam­pus, it is out­ra­geous to accuse, assume or oth­er­wise amplify an erro­neous per­cep­tion of her mem­ber­ship and what it could mean.

I look for­ward to the day she is con­firmed and we can once again resusme our daily lives with­out being bom­barded by the fly­ing debris that results from the col­li­sion between Amer­i­can ideals and Amer­i­can real­i­ties. I admire Pres­i­dent Obama for under­tak­ing the cul­tural respon­si­bil­ity of bat­tling through such sites of racial ten­sion and growth. It’s not an easy task, which is why we haven’t worked on it as a soci­ety very often. I hope that the new gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans, those my age and younger, regard­less of their views toward finances or soci­ety (whether con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­eral), will be able to sep­a­rate these objec­tive, quan­tifi­able issues from the irra­tional, unem­bod­ied fear that comes from the inevitable changes in the make-up of a large soci­ety and multi-shaded cul­ture like that of the United States.

Feli­ci­dades, Juez Sotomayor.