Posted by Ilya Somin: Sotomayor May be Wrong About Race, but She is No Racist: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_24-2009_05_30.shtml#1243617236
Legal commentator Stuart Taylor has[1] a good column criticizing various conservative pundits - including Rush Limbaugh and New Gingrich - who accuse Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist. Both Taylor and I have been [2]very critical of Judge Sotomayor's 2001 speech where she claimed that "a wise Latina" judge will generally make better decisions than a white male one, and argued that judges can often legitimately base decisions in part on their racial or ethnic identity. I believe her position is wrong. But it isn't racist. Sotomayor did not suggest that whites are an inferior race relative to some other group or that they should be denied equal rights or relegated to second-class citizenship. Conservatives often rightly denounce overblown accusations of racism advanced by leftists. For that reason, among many others, it is important that they avoid committing the same sin themselves. And while we are on this sorry subject, Gingrich also did his reputation no favors when he said that "Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist" in the same statement(quoted by Taylor) in which he accused Sotomayor of racism. I think Obama is wrong about a great many things. But he pretty clearly isn't a "reverse racist," much less "the greatest living example" of such. References 1. http://ninthjustice.nationaljournal.com/2009/05/the-right-should.php 2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_24-2009_05_30.shtml#1243483882 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
