Some more context on Sotomayor’s ‘wise Latina’ remark
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in 1994 delivered a speech that included a remark very similar to the 2001 “wise Latina” sentence that is driving conservative criticism. But in 1994, it didn’t make any waves.
Greg Sargent broke the news of the 1994 speech Wednesday and noted that no one brought it up when Sotomayor was confirmed to the Court of Appeals in 1998.
The Wall Street Journal also provided some more context on Thursday on the 2001 speech. Evidently, audience members didn’t think the remark was very controversial.
From the Journal:
The 2001 address, delivered at an auditorium in Boalt Hall, the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, was part of a symposium called “Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation.” About 100 Hispanic lawyers and law students attended.
“I don’t think anybody thought it was incendiary or inflammatory or anything like that,” said Rachel Moran, then a Berkeley law professor. Ms. Moran, who is Hispanic, invited Judge Sotomayor, whom she had known at Yale Law School.
Chris Arriola, a deputy district attorney in Santa Clara County, Calif., agreed. “I took it as she was using an opposite to make a point,” said Mr. Arriola, an active supporter of the Sotomayor nomination. “She was trying, as I understood it, to dispel the myth that somehow minority judges were the ‘other’ with an inability to be fair.”
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