Watching the coverage of Sonia Sotomayor’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I could not help but notice that her Hispanic heritage took center stage. As a Hispanic myself, this is very insulting. While it is useful to note the biographical component of Sotomayor, what is truly in question is her fitness to serve as Supreme Court justice, not for cultural attache at the United Nations. Being poor once, being a woman, or being Hispanic do not qualify her for being a justice. Her legal judgment and experience do. The fact that Schumer, Gillibrand, and Sotomayor herself cite her heritage as such a prominent reason to consider her for this position bothers me and should bother every American. Just like no one should be denied on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and so on, no one should be given preference on that very same basis. She is an American, just like Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and Indian-Americans, and therefore should score zero extra points for being Hispanic or a woman. Everyone has a heritage and the promise of American equality means that no one class or group gets an advantage over another because they belong to that class or group. It is her judgment we care about.

From the looks of it, her resume seems rather unremarkable, decidedly “un-supreme.” Is the pool of candidates so shallow that we must reach into the “minority bag” and pull out the first acceptable individual? I do not know enough about this person to fully judge her, though I will be following the process more closely now that it is all but certain that the Democrats will push her confirmation through, regardless of her fitness for the job. One thing that is clear, and was mentioned by Lindsey Graham, is that if any white politician would have uttered the words that she had, their public career would have probably been finished. Imagine some white, male politician with a thorough southern drawl say:

“I would hope that a wise WHITE MAN, with the richness of his experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a LATINA WOMAN who hasn’t lived that life.”

The uproar would have been deafening. I reject regarding one race or ethnicity or gender as superior to any other, whether from a majority perspective or a minority one. Let’s keep true to that American value that says that we are all equal before the eyes of our Creator and not, in the name of some hypocritical interpretation of “equality,” say that the minority is superior to a majority by merit of simply being a minority.

-AG