Supreme Pride, Profound Concern

(Click here for Spanish) This week, the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.  Her ascension to the highest court of the nation guarantees her a place in history: she is the first Hispanic (and also Hispanic woman) to attain this office, the highest civic honor of any Hispanic in the history of this nation to date.  

This is a source of honor and pride for us, the Hispanics in the USA.  The fact that the daughter of a Puerto Rican immigrant has scaled the top of the government structure of the country is a cause for high celebration. 

Another hero in this story is her mother Doña Celina Báez de Sotomayor, who widowed with young children, worked hard to give them the best education.  The achievement of her eldest daughter will encourage all the mothers who are laying their life to bring up children alone.  It will also encourage all immigrants, for whom Sotomayor demonstrates that the “American dream” that anything is possible for those who work diligently and smartly, is not dead. 

The Honorable Judge comes from a humble home.  She was born to a father of little education who did not speak English until his death, when she was nine.  Her family lived in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods all her childhood.  Sonia Sotomayor thus joins her colleague, the Honorable Clarence Thomas, another catholic of minority and humble origins who is an Associate Judge since 1991.

Despite our pride and the praise that the new Judge deserves, her ascension to the Supreme Court awakens contradictory sentiments.  It reminds me of the day in which the first Black President was elected in this country.  The overwhelming majority, if not all the people, felt justifiably proud of electing someone of a race that was so discriminated historically.   Even those of us who did not agree with his politics celebrated the achievement.  I felt the deep satisfaction of my African American brothers and sisters; it was impossible not to celebrate with them the common victory.   

Similarly, when a person of Hispanic descent ascends for the first time to the Supreme Court, all of us who remember the long march it took and the many who prepared the way, rejoice.  Her achievement enriches us all.  She is a legitimate source of pride for all women, for every Hispanic, for all who share humble origins and for everyone who loves equality of opportunity.

But, this does not erase my concern that in the Supreme Court of the land, there sits a person who does not believe in a universal law, but sees it from a political and ethnic perspective.   Judge Sotomayor said in a conference in England in 1996 that the law is a dynamic system that evolves like society:  “The law that lawyers practice and judges declare is not a law with a capital “L” as many would like to think that exists.”

She comes from a background of activism in pro of minority civil rights.  In Princeton Sotomayor co-founded “Acción Puertorriqueña”, the first Puerto Rican student organization of that University (event I followed through my friend and protégée, Josie Torres).   And upon graduation she cited in the yearbook a Socialist thinker, Norman Thomas: “I don´t champion lost causes, but causes yet to win.”  As a law student she joined an association of Black, Hispanic and Asian students and adopted a “Third World” rhetoric in some of her writings.  And for twelve years she was a member of the Board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a sometimes radical civil rights agency. 

You see, Sonia María Sotomayor belongs  to the generation of Puerto Ricans (or “Newyoricans”, as she herself has put it), that forged, a decade after their Black brothers, the struggle for the vindications of the civil rights of their people.  And, as she reaches the first judicial office of her nation, she follows in the steps of that other standard-bearer of his race, President Barak Obama.