Sunday, May 31, 2009

Truth and empathy are universal and classless precepts

http://www.stevenkurlander.com/

Dear KurlyReaders:

This week, I examine whether the quote by Supreme Court designee Judge Sonia Sotomayor extolling the wisdom of Hispanic women was actually “racist” and argue that she is basically just one of the “boys” if you consider her legal training and experience.
Please let me know what you think and give me feedback at skurl@aol.com. I would also ask you to send me one email of a friend, relative, or fellow worker who would enjoy receiving Kurly’s Kommentary on a weekly basis.

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Thank you for reading my blog and have a great week. Kurly.
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Sonia is really just one of the boys

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Judge Sonia Sotomayor


LAKE WORTH – Between my second and third year of law school, I worked as a law intern in the NYS Attorney General’s office in Buffalo. During that summer, I worked with two African-American law students and we developed a true friendship with one another, learning about each other and our life experiences.

As the summer continued, I began to understand a lingering resentment they nurtured growing up and living in poverty of New York City ghettos. I grew to understand about a cultural sensitivity to racial bigotry which touched their lives on a daily basis.

During the third year of law school, one of them asked me to come to a meeting of BALSA, the Black American Law Student Association to see if I wanted to join the organization.
When it was time for the meeting, I walked into the classroom where it was being held and encountered immediate, intense hostility from some of the law students there. “What are you doing here?” one asked. “You don’t belong here,” another student said to me.

An immediate debate broke out about me attending the meeting between my two friends and others who wanted me to leave. I never forgot the feeling I had of being the only “different” person in the room and feeling the resentment of some to my being there because of the color of my skin.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for the Supreme Court by President Obama has resulted in the usual hypercritical recrimination associated with the selection of any candidate for the court. Some right wing pundits and politicians have seized on the quote above as evidence that Judge Sotomayor is a “reverse racist” and unfit to preside on the high court.
If anything, the analysis of her statement as racist is nothing more than converse political correctness. The quote in itself is not racist (if anything it is reverse-misogynistic), poorly worded, and just plain self-serving, egotistical crap.
When I read her statement, I understood better than others what she really meant to say based on my own particular law school experiences. However, at the same time, I truly doubted Sotomayor really had endured the true bigotry my friends in law school had really faced in their lives that would define her thinking in such terms.

Sotomayor is not at all the woman she describes in her remark. She has not struggled in her adult life against prejudice, but has instead greatly exploited being a minority woman in the age of affirmative action and political correctness.

Her “racist” statement is evidence of the persona she has developed to help rationalize her actual membership to America’s most elite legal society. She may talk the poverty talk, but her true life experience shows that she is actually no different than the white males she will be joining on the bench.

Judge Sotomayor’s life experience as a Latin woman may have shaped her initial nurturing, but it is important in terms of her appointment to the Supreme Court to separate her childhood upbringing from her professional career, particularly in terms of her interpretation of the rule of law.

Judge Sotomayor’s legal career was foremost shaped by her clinical legal training and professional experience, not her sex, upbringing, or ethnic background. A brilliant person, she was educated at Princeton and Yale Law School, where she was a member of an elite group of students on law review. Her legal experience as a prosecutor, a member of a boutique law firm, as a law professor at NYU and Columbia, and as a privileged Federal judge over a long period of time truly distances herself for the last 35 years from the common man and women in any terms of true empathy gained from life experience.

So, let’s stop pretending that Judge Sotomayor is truly a unique, historic candidate for the Supreme Court. Despite the Obama propaganda, the “richness of her experience” is no different than any other sitting white justice on the Supreme Court. Notwithstanding Sotomayor’s family and ethnic background, she in fact belongs to a very powerful elite club of American lawyers that don’t spend much time preparing Arroz Con Pollo for dinner for a large family.

Even if the facade of struggle being propagated by the Obama Administration is deceptive, it is a mistake to focus on her silly self-serving statement and the Marxist class struggle rhetoric in determining her fitness for the Supreme Court. Instead, let’s judge the Judge strictly on her legal talents and rulings alone and not worry about whether her unique personal ethnic or sexual compassion will make her fit or unfit to sit on the bench.
A debate about whether Judge Sotomayor is racist is an asinine, but caustic distraction that is designed in part to alienate the Republican Party further from American Hispanics and diminish the important process of picking a Supreme Court Justice on the sole merits of her legal decisions and her interpretation of the rule of law.
The true shame of this debate is that the bona fide trials and tribulations of people like my law school friends in Buffalo are being cynically exploited by the President to drive the appointment to the Supreme Court of an otherwise very qualified member of the elite American legal hierarchy.
This week's Kurlykomments Tweets on Twitter:
· Obama's Sat. night date a good thing for the country. They are allowed to have a good time together. Dating keeps marriage & minds healthy 9:02 AM May 30
· Recent news on Jon & Kate plus 8 exemplifies what is wrong with American morals-TV ratings & fame supercede children, family, and marriage 7:44 AM May 30th
· FLOCCI­NAUCINI­HILIPIL­IFICATION-a summation of the stimulus package & the attitude of Congress propping up corrupted lending institutions 1:49 PM May 29th
· Life expectancy for diabetic is 8-12 years less-should that be an issue when picking a SC Judge especially if age of candidate is important? 9:48 AM May 28th
· Republicans should remember many SC picks never follow adhere to earlier pol.leanings ala Earl Warren & may be surprised later w/Sotomayer 10:36 AM May 27th
· Free Aung San Suu Kyi 6:33 PM May 26th
· Colin Powell's perspecitve important & valid-new Rep.Party needs to respect & debate moderate views & stop infighting to get strong for 2010 12:46 PM May 26th
· Thank you to all American soldiers, past & present-fighting 233 yrs for the rgt.of free speech that allows me to post this tweet & my blog. 7:22 AM May 25th

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