Posted on 02/05/2011 5:23:45 AM PST by reaganaut1
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor drew attention to her racial politics this week during a speech at the University of Chicago Law School, where she took issue with the positions of some of her colleagues on the bench.
Since her confirmation hearings, in which she had to explain her previous assertion that a wise Latina woman "would more often than not reach a better conclusion" than a white man in the same position, Justice Sotomayor has typically been more guarded in her public comments. But at the student forum, she criticized Chief Justice John Roberts's position in a 2007 case about whether public school admissions could be race-conscious to achieve diversity (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1).
Writing for the court, Justice Roberts said that "the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Justice Sotomayor told U of C students that that formula is "too simple" for her. "I don't borrow Chief Justice Roberts's description of what colorblindness is," she said. "Our society is too complex to use that kind of analysis." She also told students that, contrary to fellow Justice Antonin Scalia, she was "not sure" whether determining the original intent of the Constitution was the most important consideration in deciding a case.
Justice Sotomayor also talked about being the first Hispanic woman on the Supreme Court. "To the extent my presence has given people of color a sense of belonging with the court, then I have made a difference," she said. The justice said that she doesn't let her racial identity affect her judgment in cases but is convinced that others pre-judge her. "People have views of me and expectations of me that are based on stereotypes," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Because the ex-Kiwi had ancestors who came here in the early 1600s etc...
My gg grandfather left here (Canada) and went to NZ...
We had his Bible that contain some of his family history so we knew that we came from the US...
All I did was come back home...
Kind of like someone from here visiting Ireland to see where their forebears were from...
My Dutch Walloon new home and lands seeking ancestors arrived in NYC instead of Virginia in 1623..
My English settler ancestors arrived in Boston with Governor Wintrop in 1630..
My French Huguenot refugee ancestors arrived in NYC in 1685
My Palatine German tar for sealing English ships making ancestors arrived in the Albany area in 1710
My Irish indented servant ancestors arrived in the Albany area to work on the Livingston Manor in 1720...
My American ancestors fled north in 1776 to be among the first settlers in the newly formed country of Upper Canada under English rule...
My English ancestors who were on one of the “First Four Ships” (equal to the Mayflower in pomp and importance) arrived in Canterbury, New Zealand in 1850
The only daughter of that family on that ship married my Canadian/American ancestor whose 4 grandparents and mother were all born in the US to American parents....
My gg grandparents...
My families were among the first to the US, Canada, and New Zealand...
:)
I wonder if the New York Times and the Holder Justice Department considers racial discrimination against “people of color” a “complex” subject.
Somehow I doubt it.
Fascinating history!
I’ve often hiked in a former hamlet about 1 hour north of NYC that was settled by Huguenots prior to independence(Doodletown, NY - now abandoned, but the cemeteries are still there). Part of my family is from Quebec; they’re Catholic, arriving sometime I believe in the early 1900’s. Canada is beautiful to visit, but I couldn’t take the weather there (summer is too short, winter too long, and nights are cold even in the summer). It was great 15 years ago, when US$100 got you C$150+; now they are pretty much on par.
A co-worker visited distant relatives in Ireland at the height of their economic boom; people were wary of them until they were convinced they weren’t trying to press legal claims for family lands (at which point they were quite welcoming).
Can you claim NZ citizenship? I know they’re pretty selective about getting in, and I didn’t know if you had a “golden ticket”.
Not any more...
(Obama Senior had the same nationality at birth as I did)..
I was born British in Dec 1948 but one month later in Jan 1949 when my mother registered my birth the newly legislated New Zealand citizenship had kicked in so I was registered as a New Zealander...
I had a New Zealand passport but could have qualified for a British passport due to my birthdate...
In Aug I will have been in the US for 40 years...
I became an American citizen in 1975...
Before I was sworn in as an American I had to RENOUNCE my New Zealand citizenship by raising my hand and saying so and by signing away my rights and claims and confirming the renouncement......
until one month later at the naturalization ceremony I was a citizen of no country at all...no legal passport etc..
I was legally here in accordance with my Alien Regitration Card and status but I could not have left and then come back...My NZ passport was no longer any good from the moment I renounced my NZ citizenship...
Although I had the protection and rights and privileges as a legal resident of the United States they were dependent on my appearing at the ceremony to become an American citizen...
I knew fully what was involved and I did what was necessary to become an American citizen, gladly...although it was hard to renounce the country of my birth...
But how people claim a dual citizenship is beyond both me and the American naturalization laws...
Yours is an interesting point. It’s patronizing to minorities tom insinuate that they need preferences. No one picks up on this. There is extremely little racism against people of color any more, especially by whites.
You don’t need to “claim” dual citizenship. Sometimes you are just granted citizenship of another country. Maybe from your parents before you were of age, or through marriage. Only naturalized Americans have to give up their previous affiliations, and even then they are probably serial considered citizens from the other country still.
I believe that every American from Mexico is still considered Mexican by Mexico. There is nothing anyone can do about that.
This is why, when we finally make the definition for Natural Born Citizen a part of our Constitution, we need to be aware that if there is a clause that our President may not be a citizen of another country, it would be easy for other countries to disqualify a candidate by declaring him a citizen of their land.
I didnt need to...
some unkonown “kind soul” outside of the families already did them...
I’m “sealed” several times over...
How comforting...
:)
Interesting; people who claim dual citizenship often misunderstand what it means. I have family that was born in Europe; they eventually became US citizens, and the US will recognize them as nothing else. However, some countries do not force you to renounce your “other” citizenship when you take US citizenship; therefore, the country of their birth will recognize citizenship of either country, though the US does not. Whatever exceptions people claim, that is the law: the US considers your former citizenship surrendered when you take US citizenship.
The whole idea was that they needed a leg up a while back (not so much for “past injustices” as much as the lack of opportunities at the time); the leg up has becaome an institutionalized crutch as generations of blacks, Hispanics, and women pass through higher education and can still use what the government seems to consider their apparent genetic disability to be overcome by legislation.
It has made things difficult for those in the “disabled” classes who actually belong there; they are treated as less serious tokens who are simply hired to keep lawyers at bay. Inflating school grades or employee evaluations for this purpose, while seemingly financially beneficial to the recipient, in the long run do a lot more harm than good. When times get tough, the least productive workers are let go, and that often includes a lot of people who may not have been qualified to begin with. White males have to work harder to keep their jobs and earn their pay, and the result is a much better white male workforce than the victims of the soft bigotry of lowered expectations.
But don't expect this ignoramus to ever figure that out. She's just too full of herself.
A web of lies is always more complex than the truth.
Our views of you are based on your incompetence, which you make plain to see.
A wise person wouldn't be looking for racial terms like ‘Latina’ to describe anyone, let alone themselves. What if people without as much skin pigment as those Sotomayer refers to started splitting themselves into groups and describing themselves with new terms? How about wise ‘Pan-Mediterraneans’? Or wise ‘Nordicina’s’? Or ‘ People of the North Sea? Or ‘Wise Unpigmented Slovakinas?
Terms like Soomayor use are designed to differentiate people from ‘Whites’ who they can then blame for everything about their own lives they're unhappy with.
I agree, though Puerto Ricans, when looking at the islands around them, can hardly make the case that the American occupation has hurt them; there will never be much of an independence movement in Puerto Rico. Some young men will talk sh!t to score with some unwise Latinas, but they know they are lucky to have rights and opportunites their neighbors can only dream of.
I’m so insecure I refer to myself as a “down-with-it honky”.
“she was “not sure” whether determining the original intent of the Constitution was the most important consideration in deciding a case.”
Either she’s lying. Or she just can’t make up her mind on the single biggest question in Constitutional law.
a wise Latina woman is better than a white man ?
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