Sotomayor explains herself to Sen. Lindsey Graham on C-Span. The hearing at hand questions Sotomayor's racial biases based on her “Wise Latina” comment: “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.”
The irony of the situation is that while she is been accused of being a racist towards white men, during the hearing, inevitably she is being questioned by a Sen. Graham. A white man.
Maybe deep down inside the real irony is that when Sotomayor becomes the next Supreme Court Judge justice, she will to some degree represent the mirror image of the maids and cooks of her ‘white men' critics. To many Americans, unfortunately, this awill be an even more appalling circumstance then that of her comment.
The word “racist” in itself is a vague word often based on personal perception, but the real racism that resides in the belly of America carries a heavy context associated with a reference in history books , our past and current institutional framework, and our overall general acceptance in American culture. When a San Francisco Chinese boy says, “the busdriver is racist,” the context is not only associated with the busdriver but a historical context so deep and massive that it should teach us how to be better human beings, letting us know, that we will not burn the communities of Chinese families like we did in the 1800's and we will not jail them like we did in Angel Island. Some of us will have references to police brutality, and of war and colonialism, for others it will be slavery. A complexity that even has variations like ‘environmental racism', and synonyms like the ‘prison industrial complex.'
Regardless, the word racist is so massive that Sotomayor's comment can not be called racist, it would be an insult to do so, in fact it could be argued that not only are her comments not racist but that in all actually her being questioned for her comment is racist. Her having to explain herself to a white man is just an amplified version of young Latino kids who have to explain themselves to cops, “no officer, I'm not a gang member.”
Bill O'Reilly, one of Sotomayor's critics says, “Sotomayor is the product of a system that now celebrates minorities, but with many wrongs now right we are supposed to be a society wherein equal justice for all prevails.” What Mr. O'Reilly fails to understand is that this celebration that he talks about is a celebration for minority folks, a sense of victory and overcoming, it is not Mr. O'Reilly celebration, and even though he might be invited to the party he first must except that people of color have been wronged, and in doing so recognize that ‘white males' have been the craftsmen of this oppression. No one is now lashing out their anger towards white men, no one is holding them accountable in any court room, simply stated, part of the healing and growth is to be honest and come to the realization that we need more voices in the overall civic conversation than that of white males.
Sotomayor's role as Supreme Court Judge is not, in itself, a victory because she is a minority. It is a victory because she has the ability to bring a voice to those often ignored in the course of American politics. The perspective of ‘struggle' is a valid perspective that many people of color understand. The idea that white men might have hard time understanding this perspective is not a racist one, but a valid one, considering the racial historical context not only of America, but modern history in general.