When minorities speak out about race, they are deemed racist

when whites (republicans) do it, it's all peachy keen.

The GOP got all rabid on Rev. Wright. I didn't have problem one with the things he said.

They are Rev. Wrighting Sonia Sotomayor. Only with her, it's attacking on steroids as they had to dig deep and take ONE sentence out of a lengthy speech to twist, turn and mangle.

This from the folks who laughed and giggled when calling Barak Obama "the magic negro".

What's wrong with this picture?

on Judge Sotomayor.

Tancredo speaks for the remnant racist demographic accustomed to shoving their way to the front of the line and forcing minorities to the backs of buses and diners, etc. I have no idea how he lives with himself.

But last November a shitload of people voted for Barack Obama over John McCain, and it appeared to have to do with "the content of (Obama's) character."

Tancredo is a cave dweller. His ilk are dying out fast. The sooner the better.

- - -


:thumbsup: :hi:

Amen to that.

The Rethugs are revealing their true colurs now and they are not pretty. They are nothing but dirty filthy bigots swimming in a cesspit of their own making.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5748011&mesg_id=5748011

.. they are bringing the whole party down with them.

Is this the result of the repeal of the Fairness
Doctrine?

Guess they are too stupid to learn from the last two elections. Their bad. Our good.

ignorance blinds them from the obvious, their projecting.

No person should say they are superior nor inferior because of their race. MLK Jr's dream was for people to be judged on the content of their character. I'm waiting for the day when that happens and it looks like we are waaaaaay off from that.

Remember how the idiots/pigs/fools treat us females.

Its 'us and them,' some superficial marks of 'difference' justifies such treatment to them, enables them to 'prevail.'

She was specifically talking about the relevance of having experienced discrimination to judging discrimination cases.

See

http://mediamatters.org/research/200905290049

and other commentary on the MediaMatters.org site.

The same sentiment can be expressed in many different ways, and some of those ways can inflame, and the way she said it did so.

That is why it should be walked back and reexplained in a more neutral way.

You've heard the RW out of context snip.

THE COMMENT: "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," Sotomayor said in a 2001 lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Here is the bottom line from the AP article:

The problem for Sotomayor is that she went beyond the experience-is-important line. She said the Latina experience leads to "better" decisions than the white experience. It's hard to imagine a judge getting nominated to the Supreme Court after saying white men made better decisions than black women, or Catholics better than Jews.

http://www.newser.com/article/d98epho80/spin-meter-do-latinas-make-better-decisions-than-white-men-do-judges-make-policy.html

She was talking very specifically about discrimination cases and diversity on the bench. And in that context, she said that she thought Latinas could use their life experience of belonging to a minority to come to a better decision than a judge would has never been in a minority, e.g., a white male.

She did not say Latinas make better judges.

She did not say she would make a better judge because of her race or her gender.

Political Insider
Sotomayor will acknowledge Latinas-know-better comment was a poor choice of words

4:24 pm May 29, 2009, by Jim Galloway

This just filed by the Associated Press:

The White House says Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor acknowledges she made a poor word choice in a 2001 speech in which she said that a Latina judge would often reach a better conclusion than a white male judge who hasn’t lived the same life.

That’s according to presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs. He says he has not talked directly to Sotomayor about it but has spoken to people who have.

Critics have singled out the 2001 comment by Sotomayor for criticism. She was describing how personal experiences can affect judging. She said a “wise Latina woman” with her experiences would more often than not reach a “better conclusion” than a white male.

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2009/05/29/sotomayor-acknowledges-an-8-year-old-gaffe/

Have you seen this video with Tancredo and Eric from Media Matters w/ Rick Sanchez?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSliLDRJqy8

They are falling fast and they know it. So why not speed up the crash and burn by showing their asses everywhere?

Fine with me.

a white man (or white woman) had said them. And I disagree with your approval of Rev. Wright. Had Obama not disowned him, I wouldn't have voted for him. I was offended by some of the things Wright said. They were racist statements to my ears.

But you ARE right in that a bru-ha-ha isn't made as much when a white man says something borderline.

But white men don't get away with racist statements anymore. See stories about Trent Lott and that other old coot, who was a racist and was toasted for statements made years after he supposedly transformed.

Now it seems that people of color are excused for making racist comments. Sensitivity is needed for both white people AND people of color. The rule is...if you wouldn't want something said about YOU, don't say that same thing about someone ELSE.

So....Sotomayor would hope that being who she is would mean she'd make better decisions than a white man? Flip that...what if Alito came out now and said that being who he is would mean he'd make better decisions than an hispanic woman? Both statements are insulting to the other, not true, and racist on the face of the words. White people can have "rich life experiences," as can all the other races.

by a white man. Read her speech, it's on line. It's called A Latina Judge's Voice.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/05/26_sotomayor.shtml

She said she would HOPE that (she describes her rich life experiences as a latina woman) would mean that she would make BETTER decisions than a white man.

I'm not going to listen to her whole speech. We've all seen the quotes on TV, spelled out across the screen.

if you can't bother to read it for yourself. And have a nice day!

of arguments.

I saw the quote several times on different stations...in quotes, spread across the screen.

out of context.

Here's a video of their attack on her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Jce236HZ8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmediamatters.org%2Fmmtv%2Fvideo%2F%3Fpage%3D1&feature=player_embedded

There's a video around here somewhere of Media Matters showing that she said her experience of discrimination would help her in discrimination cases. Which is the same thing I've been saying for days now.

This is her record on cases involving race:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=8440626

You might ask, when you are shown a one sentence quote in big letters across your screen, why you are being shown that sentence and what you are not being shown.

Stop relying on right wing slant and do the work of reading the speech yourself.

“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.”

As you can see, I had the quote right.

My point is made.

the incorrect reports on what she said and the context in which she said it - and the failure to report that both Alito and Thomas made highly similar comments to what she actually said, which we've heard VERY little about.

I watch KO and all the shows ad nauseum. I've seen the direct quote spread across the screen in quotation marks.

She said something like she would hope that her rich life experiences as a latina woman would mean that she would make better decisions than a white man.

Now, I don't think she meant exactly that. I hope not, anyway. Because saying that you make better decisions than someone of a different race, because of your own experiences AS a member of the race to which you belong...is a racist statement.

I'm aware of what Roberts and Alito said, also. What they said is what I think Sotomayor meant...that her life experiences as a latina woman are part of who she is, and she brings that viewpoint to all her decisions. That's not the problem part. The problem part is the part where she says that her decisions she'd hope would be better than someone else of another race, because of her own race. Imagine that statement with different races interjected: What is she said she'd hope that her rich life experiences as a latina woman would mean that she'd make better decisions than an African American man? What if Clarence Thomas said his rich life experiences as an Af. Am. man would mean, he'd hope, that he'd make better decisions than a latina woman? See what I mean? That's not a good part of her statement, and it is insulting to another gender and another race.

We are not ipso facto better decision makers because of our race. I thought that had been decided already decades ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSliLDRJqy8

I'm sure you can figure out why Tancredo, one of the biggest bigots in the Republican party is wrong.

As I said before but will say a bit more clearly this time: there are multiple commentary and stories on MediaMatters.org that address this. I linked to one of them - and her full speech, including the one sentence you are misinterpreting is linked within the story that I linked in my post #15. I can't do any more of the work for you. The sentences immediately before the statement that you paraphrased were very clear that she was speaking in reference to sex and race discrimination cases -- and other sentences prior to this one ALSO talked about the context's being discrimination cases:

"In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment."

Some days I think that reading an article on privilege needs to be a requirement for signing up here.

Not sure if that would do any good. It's not like there haven't been tons of past threads on the very subject.

I've even seen people here argue that "tar baby" ia not a racial slur.

If you fail, your registration doesn't get through and you have to keep trying.

Yeah, there's a ton of crazy stuff on here. I facepalm a lot.

:rofl:

I'm sorry. Grumpy and punchy by now but, I spent a decade at college learning how to read well so my POV must be a little screwy.

You didn't mention that the advantage Sotomayor saw in a Latina woman referred only to "race and gender discrimination" cases. By not mention this key fact you give the impressin that she believes that's the case in gun issues, abortion issues, and every issue.

Second thing you did not mention was that she spoke about "a white male who has not had the same experiences" or something to that effect. She did not refer to all white males.

and white people on TV and in seats of power get upset and make it all about race when they have nothing else to say

The point is that minorities are not supposed to say anything about race. They are supposed to wait until white people figure out how to solve it themselves.

When the GOP is called on its bias toward the rich, they scream "trying to start a class war!"

Any time she so much as mentions race in one of her columns, like clockwork, the AJC prints a letter from some wingnut with the term "race card."

And it's usually not even calling out anyone on racism; usually it's simply a matter of explaining how different people tend to perceive things.

How great his nomination was, they were applauded.

But when it is Democrats mentioning their candidate, they are indeed labelled "racist."

:shrug:

:wave:

lol

a person feels he or she, if a minority, is a victim of racism I hear, "that is a tough charge" or "I don not think it was meant that way" blah, blah, blah... They never ask a white, male nominee if his race and gender impact his view of the law because the law is written from his perspective, largely. The baseline for everything is rooted in that perspective and if they fear that a person will move that bar then, the nominee, are asked to prove their loyalty to it.

baseless Orwellian bullshit is an inauthentic but effective way of not having to acknowledge the truth of her words and the context for why she said them. IMHO.

Sotomayor's comment wasn't inflammatory at all (I can see why some of Rev Wright's comments are controversial to the average American - I can't see how her comment was AT ALL).

I'm not sure they would have attacked a male in the same position as Sotomayor (at least not as viciously).

"racism", "bigotry", or "values". Anything they say is subject to scruntiny of their history of racism, bigotry, and hypocritical "family values".