I want to start by talking a little bit about my family background. One of my great grandfathers arrived in New England as a sailor on a whaling vessel from Portugal. For a time, he worked for the owner of a farm on the Massachusetts coastline. Every week when he was paid, he gave some of his pay back to the farmer with the understanding that, eventually, he would own the farm. Not knowing the customs of the land and not being a very good English speaker, he paid this man in good faith week after week but he never asked for nor received a receipt. At the end of this period, my great grandfather was informed that he had no proof of payment and, therefore, no claim to the land. He was fired and dismissed from the property. The Irish branch of my family was greeted by the KKK upon moving into a suburb of Boston. Don’t let me forget my Italian ancestors who lived in ghettos and worked menial jobs in the Jersey City Colgate toothpaste factory. My hardworking German ancestors helped tame the west. Despite my pride in my ancestors for their perseverance and my respect for their hardships, I do not identify as Italian, Portuguese, Irish, etc. Above all, I do not view myself as "white." Instead, I view myself as an American. I like to consider myself the personification of the promise of the "melting pot." Once parts of different and mutually exclusive ethnic groups, my ancestors found their common ground to work towards a common goal.  

If you ask a proponent of the "salad bowl" what I am, you’ll likely get "white male." The assumptions that go along with the term, the assumptions of privilege, a uniform cultural background in my family, and the assumption of prejudice, are falsely attributed only because of race. Yet these same people who have reduced my family’s narrative to a story of privilege and prejudice are the very same who cannot help themselves in lauding the ethnic identity of non-whites. Take Sonia Sotomayor for example. In the past week, there has been no shortage of controversy over President Obama’s choice. Much of this has focused on Sotomayor’s comment that she hoped 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." Conservatives have decried the nomination and cited this quote as racist and evidence of Sotomayor’s unwavering faith in identity (race-based) politics. Unsurprisingly, Liberals have pushed back insisting that Sotomayor’s comment has been "taken out of context" and that she is a judge of "empathy." Many Liberals go further, lauding the nomination primarily because Sotomayor is of Latin American descent.

To fully understand this contested comment, I read Ms. Sotomayor’s speech in its entirety. From the start, the speech is very accepting of the assumption that different racial and ethnic groups have profoundly different experiences in America. She, too, discusses the tension between the "salad bowl" and the "mixing bowl," describing the "struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often ambivalent about how to deal with its differences." From the comment, it’s clear the Sotomayor views society as the salad bowl. Her goal is to not just maintain a unique cultural identity, but to promote it. As I read her descriptions of her unique Latin American heritage, however, I couldn’t help but notice how similar it sounded to my own family’s experience. I truly had difficulty seeing what it was that made her experience so unique from mine and in need of promotion (presumably) over another.

To describe her background, Sotomayor starts with a discussion of her family.  She delves into the unique Latino foods and her family’s traditions. She looks back fondly on family dinners and on the games she played with her grandmother:

My Latina soul was nourished as I visited and played at my grandmother’s house with my cousins and extended family. They were my friends as I grew up. Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominos on Saturday night and us kids playing loteria, bingo, with my grandmother calling out the numbers which we marked on our cards with chick peas.

 What bothers me about this passage is not her fond memories or happy family life.  I mean, who wouldn’t have fond memories of nights at home with their family? The problem with this passage is that Sotomayor emphasizes how all these things make her distinct from someone who is not a Latino. Much of the controversy is over a comment that speaks of a fundamental difference in experience, but what here… is different from a black, white, Asian, etc. family? So she played bingo with chick peas instead of pennies and played loteria instead of monopoly. The adults played dominos instead of cards. Her family cooks rice and means instead of spaghetti and meatballs. Those differences are but mere details.

The way I was raised, and the way the melting pot works, is to find and emphasize common ground, not differences. I find it more important to see how much she shares with all of the wonderful people in our nation. Like myself and many of the people I know, Sotomayor loves her family and they have shaped her development. This, however, does not make her experience distinct from the average Americans’. Thankfully, Sotomayor acknowledges that these things alone do not make her distinctly Latin American, though the context implies she still finds they distinguish her from many Americans:

Now, does any one of these things make me a Latina? Obviously not because each of our Caribbean and Latin American communities has their own unique food and different traditions at the holidays. I only learned about tacos in college from my Mexican-American roommate. Being a Latina in America also does not mean speaking Spanish. 

So what does make one a Latino? Well, according to Sotomayor:

 I became a Latina by the way I love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul. They taught me to love being a Puertorriqueña and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it. 

Again, I think Sotomayor is too concerned with her race. Any good parent, any good human, should have loving and caring parents who convey the same message. I think that any American parent and any American immigrant comes to America hoping to love his or her experience and find a new life through hard work. Any family should teach one to love and live; children should be taught to love who they are.

I’m not trying to say that Sotomayor’s family culture is unimportant. It most certainly is. What I am trying to convey, however, is that every family shares one trait: it’s different from every other family. Tiny differences like chick peas and pennies or cards vs. dominos, are not as important as the monumental things that we share. Below our distinct traditions, we all love, live, and hope. We all want to promise our children a better tomorrow. We all look back fondly on our family and the lessons that it taught. That is what makes us human.

Is the "wise Latina women" comment racist? Judged from the standards that I, as a white male, am judged by daily, I must say that it is. Does it imply that Sotomayor is racist at heart? I think that depends on what one means by the term "racist." If one uses the definition of discrimination on the basis of race with malicious or harmful intent, then probably not. If you consider racism the belief that one race is fundamentally different from another and this difference cannot be overcome (the common definition of the word), then yes, it is racist. I believe that Sotomayor, like many salad bowl proponents, is too enamored with the superficial differences that divide us and this obsession keeps her from seeing our similarities. While salad-bowlers intentions are different from someone like a KKK member’s, they are still racist in their logic and their reasoning.

Being American, as President John Quincy Adams said, is casting " off the European [or any distinct group's] skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors." I do not view myself as a white but rather American because my family has lived the American dream. We have found a home here and we are no longer Italian, nor German, nor Polish, nor Portuguese, nor Irish. No, we are Americans and proud of it. If we hope to continue as a nation, then we cannot concentrate so heavily on our cosmetic differences and cling to the things that divided us in the past. I do not see Sonia Sotomayor as a "Latina" and I refuse to call her one because she is not one. She is an American. That is the promise of this great land. Until I am confident that Sonia Sotomayor can look past the chick peas and see the child, I can never support her as a justice for the highest court in all the land. That is what a judge is supposed to do, to see past the small differences to the great big things that hold us all together. Contrary to what some people say, it’s not hard to do.

If you enjoyed this article, I’d just ask that you to share this with your friends. Click on the "Share This" link with the green button to e-mail it to your friends or share it via social networking sites. Spread the word. One person can make a difference.

–Madas 

Lecture: ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice’ by Sonia Sotomayor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all