Legal Commentary

White Man's Burden

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias writes:

As anyone who knows me can attest, I don’t have what you’d call a strong “Hispanic” identity. . . . But for all that, I have to say that I am really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor. The idea that any time a person with a Spanish last name is tapped for a job, his or her entire lifetime of accomplishments is going to be wiped out in a riptide of bitching and moaning about “identity politics” is not a fun concept for me to contemplate. Qualifications like time at Princeton, Yale Law, and on the Circuit Court that work well for guys with Italian names suddenly don’t work if you have a Spanish name. Heaven forbid someone were to decide that there ought to be at least one Hispanic columnist at a major American newspaper.

I do have a strong identity with my hispanic background and have been in a rage about this since Jeff Rosen pulled his BS. In such a rage that I have not trusted myself to write on the issue. I am glad to see someone as level headed as Matt is seeing what I am seeing. Let's me know I am not crazy.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).