Sotomayor Watch #8

Shelby Steele, a black man who truly understands the race problem in the United States, weighs in on Sonia Sotomayor and BHO in his column: "Sotomayor and the Politics of Race".

A key paragraph:

"The White House acknowledges that this now famous statement[her often quoted Berkeley speech] -- both racist and dim-witted -- was turned up in the vetting process. So we can only assume that the president was aware of it, as well as Judge Sotomayor's career-long claim that ethnicity and gender are virtual determinisms in judging: We need diversity because, as she said in her Berkeley lecture, "inherent physiological or cultural differences . . . make a difference in our judging." The nine white male justices who decided the Brown school-desegregation case in 1954 might have felt otherwise, as would a president seeking to lead us toward a new, post-racial society. (my emphasis)

This column is an IMPORTANT read not only for a perspective on Sotomayor but for a truly creative analysis of race in our country.