President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be a Justice on the United States Supreme Court has brought to the surface the lingering resentment that so many White men in America have harbored since the end of slavery. Moreover, it has denuded the souls of white folks who have now become part of a race. It has also revived White men as victims and given voice to the intellectually dishonest rhetoric of "reverse" racism while also race-baiting the White House, albeit one headed by a Black man.
Of course, we understand that race is a social construction. That is, there is no biological basis for race. Rather, in the context of the United States, race has been formulated and given meaning by society and the courts who wished to connote difference and the privileges and insults thereto appertaining. That formulation for so much of our history defined Whites as superior and numerical racial minorities as inferior thus justifying different treatment.
First, it is not an understatement to say that many White men in America have opted out of the conversation on race. In fact, in most conversations about race, racial minorities are the ones who are presumed to be affected by racism because of America's toxic relationship with race. White men in particular enjoy the visible and invisible privilege of being both White and male and thus, until now, have seen no reason to be considered part of a "race."
The White men of whom I write have decided that they will pick the carbuncle of race in an attempt to protect their white privilege at all costs. Hoisting the White man's burden are Rush, Tancredo, Hannity, Dobbs and Gingrich; the "unelected" leaders of the party. The elected leaders (especially those with significant Latino voters) and the languid "head of the party" (Michael Steele) will collude with them by saying nothing.
As the Republican Party excogitates into a provincial confederacy of antediluvian white men, it has concluded that the only way out of quietest is to play the race card. The strategy is simple: play into the anger of White men who believe that racial minorities are becoming the "new White." If they are successful, they theorize, victory shall be theirs in 2010 thus restoring the racial balance that has been upset by the election of a Black President and the nomination of a Latina to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Second, for so long in American history, Blacks have been told to stop playing the victim and to pull ourselves up by our proverbial bootstraps. The unpropitious magniloquence used by Republicans in their attack on Judge Sotomayor through blogs, talk radio, television and other media implores that America rally around White men lest they are trapped in a cycle of pathological victimology. Leading one to ask, if White men worked hard, were the most qualified and followed the law, wouldn't justice be blind? Are they finally admitting that for all their talk about "justice being blind" that judges can and do in fact see? So, why could they not pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps in front of a Latina justice?
There have been 110 Supreme Court Justices, and of those only four have been other than White men.
Is number 5 too many or is 96 percent White male justices too few?
Third, the Republican rhetoric explains how White privilege works. The White men opposing the nomination have been using the term "reverse racism" as a part of the wrangle. Since they set the societal norm, white privilege teaches, they get to define the terms. But, how can racism be reverse? It either is racism or it is not. Realizing that racism has been used to describe the actions of Whites against racial minorities, the White men have added the term "reverse" to suggest to White people that the power dynamic is now changing and while racism can be tolerated against racial minorities, it cannot be tolerated against Whites. The problem with this discussion is that there is not one scintilla of evidence that Judge Sotomayor is a racist or that she wants to enshrine discrimination against Whites into the law.
Thus, in true "post-racial" fashion, they will reduce the 4000+ legal opinions of Judge Sotomayor to a warm bucket of spit. That is, the Ricci case. In that case, a majority of Whites and no Blacks passed a test administered by the City of New Haven for promotion to the next rank. Fearing that it would face a race discrimination suit for violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, since no Blacks passed the test, the City threw out the test and no one was promoted. As an appellate judge, Sotomayor agreed with the trial court that the White firefighters did not have a case based on the current state of the law. The case is before the United States Supreme Court and could be reversed.
During her confirmation hearings, the elected Republican senators will try to appear objective as they question Judge Sotomayor on "strict construction and judicial neutrality." The reality is that Republicans who claim to be strict constructionists but use the Ricci case to claim that Sotomayor is a judicial activist because of her ruling; are intellectually and jurisprudentially insensate at best or constitutionally pharisaical at worst. Her ruling in Ricci was not that governments must allow affirmative action. She simply upheld the power of the elected government to throw out the test. Strict constructionists do not use the power of the appellate process to substitute their views for that of elected officials. If in fact, this cacophony of dissenting voices were being genuine, they would simply state the obvious: they have run out of options and are left only with using the race card to gin up support among angry white men who fear that Brown is becoming the "new White."
Finally, this White House has shown a stunning reluctance to avoid engaging in any meaningful way on the topic of race. Does the President really believe that if he discussed the reality of race in the context of this nomination that the critics of Judge Sotomayor would simply wilt? In a 2001 lecture Judge Sotomayor said that "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." Taking the race bait, the President blinked, and said, "I'm sure she would have restated it."
During his confirmation hearing, now Justice Alito said, "he cared for the little guy." Alito said that his family's experience as immigrants influenced his outlook on immigration cases. He also said that when he gets a case about discrimination, he has to think about people in his own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or religion and he does take that into account.
President Bush did not apologize for Judge Alito. President Obama did apologize for Judge Sotomayor.
Ahh, the perils of a "post-racial" Presidency.
Dr. Christopher J. Metzler is associate dean at Georgetown University and the author of The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a Post-Racial America.
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