Conservative Pat Buchanan wailed on and on about the good deeds of white men in this country (“white men built this country”) and all that’s in it. His errant remarks were in response to Judge Sonia Sotomayor being confirmed as the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Buchanan firmly believes that Sotomayor rode the Affirmative Action wave to get where she is and implied that she is incompetent for the job.
While Buchanan was lamenting about all the victimized white people, especially men, left behind in the wake of Affirmative Action, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune was affirming the continuation of white privilege in Illinois. Of course, the practice is not isolated to Illinois or to education.
The Tribune founded that wealthy and politically connected parents were able to get their underachieving children into gifted programs on the high school level and into select colleges that almost guaranteed them positions by prestigious corporations. People in high places who had made hefty political contributions cashed in their chips when their mediocre-performing children needed those officials to write letters of recommendation or make a direct call to the admissions dean. Prominent businesspeople were also tapped to do the same.
The Tribune’s probe revealed that the majority of students who benefited from political connections when applying to the University of Illinois attended elite, affluent high schools.
This cycle of maintaining white Affirmative Action is nothing new. Wealthy, white children are tracked at birth to attend the elite pre-school that puts them on the right trajectory to the corporate job that will maintain family influence and standing. Given the shrinking economy, the competition is so fierce that these families are now outing each other’s unscrupulous tactics.
Sonia Sotomayor came from humbling beginnings. She admitted her high school grades may not have been stellar, but once she got into Princeton University Sotomayor did what most economically and socially disadvantaged students do who get that kind of extraordinary opportunity: She worked twice as hard as her white counterparts to prove herself.
The judge graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976 and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal. Hers is a tale of exactly what affirmation action is supposed to do – open the door so you can show your stuff.
“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.”
This 2001 quote from Judge Sotomayor was plucked out of her past and thrown in her face by Republicans time after time during the confirmation hearings. The GOP’s preoccupation with the comment was all they had in their bag of tricks to make sure her judicial record would not get to see the light of day.
Wobbly-spined Democrats didn’t do much either to lift up her court experience above the petty fray. That’s most unfortunate because Sotomayor is destined to be the only sitting justice with actual trial court experience
I shook my head when the judge felt like she had to eat her words. I truly believe that, based upon being a woman of color, Sotomayor has developed sensibilities to the law and its impact on people. And that, because of the richness of her experience, she would more often than not reach a more balanced, more thoughtful, more unbiased conclusion on legal decisions.
As 500 years of white Affirmative Action and white supremacy continue to take hits, Sonia Sotomayor is on her way to rewriting history.