BEHIND THE HEADLINES
UB speech gives insights on Sotomayor’s views of race
2003 address focuses on how response to tragedy can overcome divisions among Americans.
Published: June 15, 2009, 12:30 am
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WASHINGTON—Six years before President Obama nominated Sonia M. Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court and six years before Rush Limbaugh labeled her a “racist,” she spoke in depth about race in a speech to graduating law students at the University at Buffalo.
Acknowledging that race and ethnicity can divide Americans, she stressed that the nation’s reaction to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had helped bring people together— and that the spirit of giving born on that day of tragedy should serve as inspiration for years to come.
“We have to learn to be heroes every day,” Sotomayor said in that May 10, 2003, speech, which was published on the Senate Judiciary Committee Web site. “On Sept. 11, we learned that we can give unselfishly and openly to everyone in our society—regardless of their color, race, creed or gender.”
The UB speech, one of dozens recently released by the White House, sheds no light on her legal philosophy or her work as an appeals court judge in New York City.
Yet it also does not hint at the controversial notion, which she uttered at the University of California at Berkeley, that prompted Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to call her a racist.
“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,” she said in that 2001 speech.
Nevertheless, a keen awareness of race and ethnicity— and their roles in American culture— infuses Sotomayor’s Buffalo speech and others she has given in upstate New York, as does a strong call to public service.
“It takes a tragedy like Sept. 11 to remind us that the differences we project onto others and which so often alienate us from each other are superficial and not terribly meaningful,” Sotomayor said at UB.
“On Sept. 11, we stood as Americans and as human beings and saw past our ethnic and gender differences and responded to a common threat with a complete giving of heart, soul and for some, of life,” she continued.
The nation and its lawyers “found our hearts and souls” in the tragedy of Sept. 11, Sotomayor said, urging the young law students to keep the civic spirit of that day and its aftermath alive.
Calling Sept. 11 “a great tragedy,” she added: “The greater tragedy will be, however, if we forget its most important lesson —the lesson of how important it is to give to others.”
That’s a consistent theme for Sotomayor. In fact, on Nov. 13, 2000, at Syracuse University’s law school, she devoted an entire speech to that notion, and its ramifications for lawyers.
In doing so, she exhibited her own belief in the importance of “empathy”—a key trait Obama said he was seeking in a Supreme Court justice to succeed retiring Justice David H. Souter.
Noting that lawyers have “a professional and moral duty to represent the under-represented in our society” through pro bono work, Sotomayor said, “Lawyers should do so not only because it is a part of membership in our bar but also because doing it is a part of doing justice.
“It is important to interact with the poorest of our society in order to ensure that the richest do not forget from whence they came and to which they could return unless the principles we espouse are protected for all,” she said.
Sotomayor has clearly not forgotten from whence she came. The daughter of Spanishspeaking parents from Puerto Rico, she grew up in a Bronx housing project.
She frequently discusses her move from that world into the Ivy League in speeches such as the one she gave Oct. 15, 2007, to the Latino Law Students Association at Cornell University.
“Princeton was an alien land for me,” she said of her undergraduate experience. “I felt isolated from all I had ever known and very unsure about how I would survive college.”
And in her first year at Yale Law School, Sotomayor confessed to feeling too embarrassed to raise her hand in class.
“The shock and sense of being an alien and at times feeling undeserving will never again be for me, and I suspect, for many of you, as profound as it has been here at college and law school,” she told the Cornell students. “Nevertheless, I never, even yet, feel completely a part of any of the worlds I inhabit.”
Those who succeed must not let such feelings stop them from making the world a better place, she said.
“We must ensure that all people in our society—not just those of us fortunate enough to be educated at institutions like Cornell—share fully in the American dream,” Sotomayor said at Cornell.
Such comments stand in contrast to the far right’s portrayal of Sotomayor.
Citing Sotomayor’s speech at Berkeley, Limbaugh said last month: “Not only does she lack the often discussed appropriate judicial temperament, it’s worse than that. She brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court.”
And Gingrich, on his Twitter feed, called Sotomayor a “Latina woman racist” who should withdraw her nomination because of her 2001 comments.
Gingrich later said his comments were “perhaps too strong and direct,” and many other Republicans have been much less critical of Sotomayor.
While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has attempted to tie Rep. Chris Lee, R-Clarence, to Gingrich’s comments by noting that Lee has not publicly condemned them, Lee has endorsed the notion of a Hispanic on the high court.
“I do think it’s important to this country that we do have representation from all our citizens, so having someone from Hispanic descent, based on what percentage of the population we have, is not necessarily a bad thing; I think it’s a good thing,” Lee said recently on WBTA radio.
One thing is clear: The nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice would bring a different set of life experiences to the court, which currently consists of seven white men, a black man and a woman.
In her Cornell speech, Sotomayor extolled growing up in a Puerto Rican family. And in Buffalo, she spoke lovingly of the ethnic melting pot that is New York City.
“In our diversity,” she added, “we New Yorkers scare many people and even ourselves sometimes.”
jzremski@buffnews.com
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