Carroll: Sonia Sotomayor “Expression of Bigotry” Calls for Full Repudiation

Great piece by Vince Carroll in today’s Denver Post on Barack Obama’s Supreme Court appointment:

If racial and gender bigotry truly have no place in American public life today, then Judge Sonia Sotomayor, during her confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, needs to utterly repudiate her 2001 assertion that “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.”

Putting that statement “in context” or explaining what she “really meant” will not do. Nor can Judge Sotomayor credibly argue that her assertion was an ill-considered mistake, since it was part of a prepared speech at the Berkeley school of law. No, she needs to reject it as the expression of bigotry that it was.

Vince Carroll is correct. While it doesn’t exactly surprise me, I continue to be disgusted by the racial identity politics, groupthink, and cultural and biological determinism of the Left. All undergirded by political correctness.

If I went loco enough to make an absurd public pronouncement akin to “I would hope that a wise Anglo-Saxon man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic woman who hasn’t lived that life,” you’d never see me elected to the school board or city council, much less appointed to our nation’s highest court.

While Vince Carroll calls for a repudiation of the judge’s bigoted remark, I cynically believe we are more likely to receive a continued repudiation from the Left, Obama, and Sotomayor of: the Declaration principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; individual liberty; personal responsibility; limited government; and the rule of law marked by blind justice.

Joshua has the early roundup of Web reaction to the Sonia Sotomayor nomination. To his list, I also would add Damon Root’s analysis of her positions on gun rights and affirmative action for Reason Online, and Q and O weighing in on the Republican reaction.