Do You Want Somebody on the Supreme Court who Doesn't Get America, Doesn't Sign on to the American Endeavor, Isn't An American, and is Ungrateful -- (see the earlier blog below)
America is about people of many nationalities and religious denominations now not conscious of much difference between each other. You know, the Irish used to consider themselves a distinct race. (And I've got a direct quote of that that I will dig up). E pluribus unum.
Of course, the people who lump the former Jews, Irish, Italians, and Connecticut Yankees together as "white" are racist themselves, "You all look the same to me."
But I'm not talking about just whites. I'm talking about people I know from Nepal who came here and became "instant Americans." I'm talking about friends with immediate ancestors from China and Korea who consider their soul to be American and unquestionably owe primary allegiance to this country even if one of my Korean friends reads Korean newspapers.
Everybody comes here and we add what we have to the mix, and become Americans. I mean, China has this incredible thing called acupuncture that until very recently has been incredibly underappreciated by Western medicine. Western medicine was, and basically still is, missing out on probably 50% of medical knowledge. People come here from China, and they have something major to contribute. People come here from India, and they bring Yoga. America is changed by the contributions of immigrants.
Not so for Sotomayor. Below are excerpts from her speech to the Connecticut Hispanic Bar Association in 1998. For the time being, I'll mostly let people judge for themselves because I don't have time to dissect this:
"... why individuals like us, many of us whom were born in this completely different American culture, still identify so strongly with the island in which our parents were born and raised."
"I became a Puerto Rican 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 Puerto Rican soul. They taught me to love America, to value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it." She does not identify primarily as an American.
" ... it is critical to accept the fact that we Hispanics are different from the larger society, that
we must work harder to overcome the problems our communities face, and that we must work
together as Hispanics to achieve changes."
"I underscore that in saying this I am not promoting ethnic segregation. I am promoting just the opposite: an ethnic identity and pride which impels us to work with others in the larger society to achieve advancement for the people of our cultures. You here, like me, who chose to be educated in college and professional institutions, who have worked in community and government institutions, have already accepted the principal that we must work together within our society to integrate its established hierarchies and structures if we are to improve our own lives and that of our communities. Nevertheless, although we should not attempt to isolate ourselves from the larger society, we also must steadfastly refuse to lose our unique identities and perspectives in this process." I am not saying she has to give up her background, but I don't see any embrace of the United States.
"America has a deeply confused image of itself that is a perpetual source of tension.
We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our
society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race- and color- blind way that ignores those very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between the melting pot and the salad bowl, ... This tension leads many of us to struggle with maintaining and promoting our cultural and ethnic identities in a society which is often ambivalent about how to deal with its differences." Having an ethnic identity and pride is fine as long as you embrace the United States and primarily identify as an American. Sotomayor doesn't seem to get this.
"Somewhere all of us Hispanics have had a defining moment when we were shocked into learning that we were different and that American society treated us differently. The shock and sense of being an alien will never again, I suspect, be as profound for any of us as that first experience because I know from personal experience that our education and professional training have equipped us to deal better in this sometimes alien land."
So she sees herself as "sometimes" an alien here. This person is not an American, is not fully comfortable in this society. I do not want such a person on the Supreme Court of the United States.
I would like to ask her, does American society treat you differently? How? If it does treat you differently, maybe American society perceives that you do not want to be an American. Or maybe it is you who refuse to embrace American society, so you approach American society differently and therefore end up with a different outcome?
"From these technological advances, our children will have more opportunities to enjoy, but it will be harder for them to hold on to their ethnic identities. But hold on to them we must because Puerto Ricans, Latinos and all minority groups, despite what part of the country we live in, face enormous challenges in this society." (And here she begins to quote statistics showing lower educational attainment, lower income, and higher unemployment for Hispanics.)
She envisions her children holding on to their ethnic identity. Terrific. She clearly does not subscribe to E Pluribus Unum, which has from the beginning been one of the pillars of this nation. W.E.B. Dubois believed in E Pluribus Unum. He believed that over time the freed slaves would intermarry with whites and the new America would have a dash of color. "Inter-racial" marriage is occuring with more frequency. (Will get stats).
Sotomayor should not be entrusted with a position on the Supreme Court, which will place her in of one of the pillars of the nation and the Republic. Because of her personal viewpoint that is opposed to E Pluribus Unum, she will probably undermine the nation, and through that, make the Republic harder to govern.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sotomayor - Ungrateful?
Sotomayor's Ungrateful Attitude
Sonia Sotomayor's parents were from Puerto Rico. She was born in the Bronx. She earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1976. Below is a description of an event that occured while she was at Princeton as told to the Connecticut Hispanic Bar Association at a dinner in 1998:
In case you didn't pick up on it, her roommate and Dolores were speaking Spanish, "and as is sometimes our wont, talking very loudly." I am from New York City, so I am used to Spanish speakers. Yes, Spanish speakers not sometimes, but often, speak Spanish very loudly amongst themselves. Many Americans find this offensive. If you come to the United States voluntarily, speak English or speak your own language quietly when you are in public. After the last great wave of immigration that ended in 1924, if immigrants spoke their native language to each other in public, they did so quietly. That is according to my mother, who was born in 1930. Let me say it frankly: The woman from Alabama reacted the way she did because she was offended. She probably wanted to tell those girls to speak English or shut up. Why? If you come to the United States because your place of origin is basically a failure, show some respect. Having lived in New York City for 22 years, I can recall only one time when I have ever heard any people from another immigrant group speaking their native language loudly.
But in order to understand the audacity and rudeness Sotomayor's statements above, we need to look at the history of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.
Puerto Rico was granted to the United States as part of the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War, that T.R. Roosevelt described as a "splendid little war." In the peace treaty signed on August 12, 1898, Spain ceded Cuba, the Philipinnes, and Puerto Rico the the United States. During the war, the United States had invaded Puerto Rico with 3,300 troops, but the combat had been inconclusive by the time the war ended. Is there any doubt how combat would have turned out if the United States had pushed the issue?
In 1917, the United States Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act. During the debate over the bill, Luis Muñoz Rivera, the Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner in Washington, argued in its favor, giving several significant speeches in the House of Representatives. On 5 May 1916 he demanded: "Give us now the field of experiment which we ask of you. . . . It is easy for us to set up a stable republican government with all possible guarantees for all possible interests. And afterwards, when you . . . give us our independence . . . you will stand before humanity as a great creator of new nationalities and a great liberator of oppressed people." (Wikipedia).
So the United States acquired Puerto Rico fair and square in a war that the United States won with minimal effort, and then out of the grace and goodness of its heart, at the request of the Puerto Rican representative, granted the jewel of U.S. citizenship to the people of Puerto Rico.
Sonia Sotomayor, the U.S. born child of Puerto Ricans, regarded the woman from Alabama, who had generations of her family as graduates of Princeton, as the one with the strange accent, and she was unwilling to budge from that assessment some 25 years later. The Alabaman spoke with a standard American regional accent. Sotomayor is the one who was ignorant of this accent and if Sotomayor has an accent, it is her accent that is strange, and foreign to this country. Puerto Rico is not legally a part of the United States, even though we did grant them citizenship.
It is this Alabaman's ancestors who were of the group that so easily won Puerto Rico through conquest and so generously granted the jewel of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.
Sotomayor has benefitted immeasurably from what the U.S. granted. Without the United States, Sonia Sotomayor might be a peasant laboring in Puerto Rico, or she might be a judge with little formal training presiding over a shack of a court in Puerto Rico.
Sotomayor's attitude should have been that she was honored to meet a descendant of the people who aquired her island with one hand and then, at the request of the island, so generously bequeathed an enormous benefit upon her people with the other. Sotomayor should have realized that she is the one who needs to learn about the southern accent, and that it is not strange; it is standard.
Not so. Sotomayor considered the southerner to be the strange one, and holds this position to this day.
I would say that if this is the attitude of Puerto Ricans, the U.S. should kick Puerto Rico loose. We never did give them their independence, as Munoz Rivera envisioned. They don't appreciate the bounty they have received due to the grace and generosity of the United States. Let's give them independence and they can wait in line to come here as immigrants if they want to come.
Sonia Sotomayor's parents were from Puerto Rico. She was born in the Bronx. She earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1976. Below is a description of an event that occured while she was at Princeton as told to the Connecticut Hispanic Bar Association at a dinner in 1998:
My very first day signing up for classes I sat outside the gym next to a woman from
Alabama. I remember being intrigued by her very unusual and lovely accent. I began to perceive the depth of our differences when she began to describe her many family members and friends who had attended Princeton. As we sat there, Dolores, my roommate, and Theresa, a friend from Puerto Rico, approached, laughing, and as is sometimes our wont, talking very loudly. At that moment, my Alabamian classmate turned to me and told me, as she looked at the approaching Theresa and Dolores, how wonderful Princeton was that it had all these strange people who spoke these foreign languages. How ironic, here I thought she was the strange one with that lovely Southern accent I barely understood.
Alabama. I remember being intrigued by her very unusual and lovely accent. I began to perceive the depth of our differences when she began to describe her many family members and friends who had attended Princeton. As we sat there, Dolores, my roommate, and Theresa, a friend from Puerto Rico, approached, laughing, and as is sometimes our wont, talking very loudly. At that moment, my Alabamian classmate turned to me and told me, as she looked at the approaching Theresa and Dolores, how wonderful Princeton was that it had all these strange people who spoke these foreign languages. How ironic, here I thought she was the strange one with that lovely Southern accent I barely understood.
In case you didn't pick up on it, her roommate and Dolores were speaking Spanish, "and as is sometimes our wont, talking very loudly." I am from New York City, so I am used to Spanish speakers. Yes, Spanish speakers not sometimes, but often, speak Spanish very loudly amongst themselves. Many Americans find this offensive. If you come to the United States voluntarily, speak English or speak your own language quietly when you are in public. After the last great wave of immigration that ended in 1924, if immigrants spoke their native language to each other in public, they did so quietly. That is according to my mother, who was born in 1930. Let me say it frankly: The woman from Alabama reacted the way she did because she was offended. She probably wanted to tell those girls to speak English or shut up. Why? If you come to the United States because your place of origin is basically a failure, show some respect. Having lived in New York City for 22 years, I can recall only one time when I have ever heard any people from another immigrant group speaking their native language loudly.
But in order to understand the audacity and rudeness Sotomayor's statements above, we need to look at the history of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.
Puerto Rico was granted to the United States as part of the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War, that T.R. Roosevelt described as a "splendid little war." In the peace treaty signed on August 12, 1898, Spain ceded Cuba, the Philipinnes, and Puerto Rico the the United States. During the war, the United States had invaded Puerto Rico with 3,300 troops, but the combat had been inconclusive by the time the war ended. Is there any doubt how combat would have turned out if the United States had pushed the issue?
In 1917, the United States Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act. During the debate over the bill, Luis Muñoz Rivera, the Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner in Washington, argued in its favor, giving several significant speeches in the House of Representatives. On 5 May 1916 he demanded: "Give us now the field of experiment which we ask of you. . . . It is easy for us to set up a stable republican government with all possible guarantees for all possible interests. And afterwards, when you . . . give us our independence . . . you will stand before humanity as a great creator of new nationalities and a great liberator of oppressed people." (Wikipedia).
So the United States acquired Puerto Rico fair and square in a war that the United States won with minimal effort, and then out of the grace and goodness of its heart, at the request of the Puerto Rican representative, granted the jewel of U.S. citizenship to the people of Puerto Rico.
Sonia Sotomayor, the U.S. born child of Puerto Ricans, regarded the woman from Alabama, who had generations of her family as graduates of Princeton, as the one with the strange accent, and she was unwilling to budge from that assessment some 25 years later. The Alabaman spoke with a standard American regional accent. Sotomayor is the one who was ignorant of this accent and if Sotomayor has an accent, it is her accent that is strange, and foreign to this country. Puerto Rico is not legally a part of the United States, even though we did grant them citizenship.
It is this Alabaman's ancestors who were of the group that so easily won Puerto Rico through conquest and so generously granted the jewel of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.
Sotomayor has benefitted immeasurably from what the U.S. granted. Without the United States, Sonia Sotomayor might be a peasant laboring in Puerto Rico, or she might be a judge with little formal training presiding over a shack of a court in Puerto Rico.
Sotomayor's attitude should have been that she was honored to meet a descendant of the people who aquired her island with one hand and then, at the request of the island, so generously bequeathed an enormous benefit upon her people with the other. Sotomayor should have realized that she is the one who needs to learn about the southern accent, and that it is not strange; it is standard.
Not so. Sotomayor considered the southerner to be the strange one, and holds this position to this day.
I would say that if this is the attitude of Puerto Ricans, the U.S. should kick Puerto Rico loose. We never did give them their independence, as Munoz Rivera envisioned. They don't appreciate the bounty they have received due to the grace and generosity of the United States. Let's give them independence and they can wait in line to come here as immigrants if they want to come.
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