Racism and Conservative Hypocrisy

DISCLAIMER: Racism is the domain of every culture, creed, society or group. In no way does the author claim that racism is proprietary to conservatives or conservative ideology. They’re just better at it.

You would think I’d be mad as hell, by now. But whatever part of a person that makes him culturally over-sensitive is pretty much dead in me. I grew up with jokes that started, “A white guy, a black guy and a Mexican guy...” where inevitably the Mexican guy was somehow made the fool. Meh. My own grandmother sagely advised me as I would run outside to play, “Don’t play with the negros!” Of course being within earshot of the negros, I had more than one fracas as a kid. As themes of Equality and Civil Rights have been on my mind this week, I find it hard to ignore the ongoing saga of Supreme Court candidate, Sonia Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor is the first person of Latin heritage to be nominated for SCOTUS, which in itself breeds controversy. As far as I know, any opposition to her nomination from the people that matter (the Senate) has been very low key. Republican Senator Cornyn, for example, says his constitutional responsibility is to advise and consent. That is good politics. Bad politics, on the other hand, is playing itself out in the hypocrisy and racism of conservative media-led fearmongering.

Conservatives haven’t found solid footing to attack the notion that a Supreme Court justice should have empathy. They tried, but ended up sounding quite heartless. Instead, pundits, including former Congressmen Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo, have focused their attentions on one sentence she uttered eight years ago at a conference promoting the Latino/Latina presence in the judiciary. On page 5 of the speech she said:

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.

Couple that with her affiliation to that radical brown power group (that's sarcasm, BTW) La Raza and you have an obvious racist.



She and Obama are the worst examples of “reverse racism” in the history of man.



Out of context, that might seem a terrible thing to say. Forget that she doesn’t say a Latina does reach a better conclusion... which would, of course, actually be a racist thing to say. But this is one sentence of a five page speech wherein she challenges the future Latino lawyers to work on their “experiences and attitudes... to make [them] capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach.”

Take the time to read the speech. Not now obviously. You have have to finish this blog and comment before the killer bees arrive. But it is good and I would be interested in an honest critique. I won’t be so naive as to say the comment wasn’t racist in any sense. As a jobless Latino I might be inclined to say, “Hey, tell them pinche gringos!” But I won't. However, reactions to it seem Super-Racist in nature. These conservative pundits are displaying their own racism in their accusations. It’s like going to a Lakers game and hearing Kobe Bryant say, “Gimme the rock!” Well! He’s obviously a CRACKHEAD who can’t get enough of “the rock,” right, Mr. Limbaugh? Mr. Gingrich? Mr. Tancredo? Tancredo is right, however. We can only look at her words to know her as a person. Kinda like this:



And by this we know that Tom Tancredo is a xenophobe who has no sociological understanding of cultural assimilation, but rather demands idiomatic and behavioral conformity of all first generation immigrants. Cult of Multi-culturalism? Racist! Racist! I see a racist!

To choose one sentence (or four minutes...) of a speech by which you make a judgment of a person's character tells the world that you already have an idea about her that you want to promote. You’ve prejudged her, as it were. If you’re going to stand on a soapbox, Tom, and defame a person as racist, please make sure your Confederate Flag belt buckle isn’t showing.

And then there’s this guy: Republican Congressman Nathan Deal of Georgia. Deal is also the Republican candidate for Governor in that state. On the same day that Judge Sotomayor was nominated for the SCOTUS, Mr. Deal said that it is time to end “birthright citizenship,” as established by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. You see the game is, if you’re an illegal, you have a baby in the U.S. who can grow up and sponsor you to come to the U.S. later on in life! Isn’t that something? So the answer, obviously, to the problem of illegal immigration is to make immigration more difficult. It makes total freaking sense! That way we don’t have to provide services to these “anchor babies,” when we can just boot ‘em out. Life’s easy when you’re a xenophobe, isn’t it? My favorite part of the argument is when they say that the 14th Amendment was written to ensure freed slaves’ citizenship. Granted. It was never, however, intended to automatically give citizenship to babies born to illegal immigrants. Thanks, fellas, for interpreting the Constitution for me. Can we now talk about how the 2nd Amendment wasn’t intended to allow citizens to buy automatic weapons?

Is Judge Sotomayor a racist? No. Not from that statement anyway. My grandma is something of a racist, but she doesn't look cross-eyed at my white wife, so we can deal with it. Plus she's not a federal judge. Racism is a serious accusation, one that Limbaugh, Tancredo and Gingrich have exemplified now and in the past. At the very least they have proven themselves to be xenophobic nincompoops. Let's leave the advice and consent to those level-headed folks that matter in this debate. And if any of them decide to take up the "Sotomayor's a racist" mantle, I'll be on those pinche gueros cabrones como una mosca en mierda!