Here Comes the Judge!

"Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're gonna get confirmed."
-Senator Lindsey Graham-

Well, rest assured Senator Graham, this is one Nuyorican Chica who will NOT be having a meltdown, certainly not in front of you, and definitely not anytime soon. Why? Because Judge Sonia Sotomayor is no Governor Sarah Palin, who, over the course of the past year, has managed to set the Women's Movement back at least 30 years by treating the position of power the people of Alaska have entrusted her with as if it were a steaming hot potato that she doesn't know how to handle, or a shiny new toy that was fun at first but, well, kind of boring now. Unlike Palin, Sotomayor is less concerned with coming off as the Caribou Barbie of the Republican party and more interested in ensuring that Constitutional law, civil rights, and justice are applied fairly and equitably to all Americans. She has demonstrated that she is a woman who knows what to do with the opportunities that countless numbers of women before her made possible. So don't worry, Senator Graham, a major meltdown is not in this woman's future.

The Sotomayor narrative is a familiar one by now, and one that the right wing knows they cannot continue to disparage, because it is the very epitome of the American struggle turned American dream played out in exactly the way this society envisions the American dream to be: overcoming the death of a father who died when she was just 9 years old, a mother struggling to raise and provide for her children alone, and a Princeton education that came through hard work and sacrifice rather than old money and nepotisim. From there going on to become a dedicated prosecutor and victim's right advocate and then receiving judicial appointments by Bush I and by Clinton. So no, they can't touch the Sotomayor narrative.

Instead what they will continue to disparage is the Sotomayor record. They will not cease their attempts to paint her as a racist who practices reverse discrimination, a bizarre chacracterization of her based primarily on the fact that she dared rule against a group of white fightfighters who felt they had been illegally passed over for promotion. What her detractors will conveniently ignore is the stark reality that in order to be a racist and practice whole-sale systematic discrimination that will impact large numbers of lives, one must possess and a maintain a position of power and a place of dominance, both of which is typically the result of one's class, race, and gender. Sotomayor was one judge among several, most of whom were conservative, who ruled in that case. So unless there is a sudden wave of Puerto Rican women taking over positions of power, authority, and control in all of America's major institutions, then one can hardly call her actions or her rulings discriminatory and racist. Besides, in a quote included in an Associated Press bio, Sotaomayor made her stance on judicial interpretation of the Constitution clear: "I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

And so tomorrow Judge Sonia Sotomayor will face a second day of what I'm sure will be grueling questioning from the right and perhaps even the middle and the left. And though I personally have my hesitations about Sotomayor because she is not, in my view, quite the progressive I would like her to be, I will nevertheless watch every second of her confirmation hearings and root her on as she catches, Super-shero style, every bullet that comes her way.