Flushing racism

A comment from Bob Herbert's editorial about Sonia Sotomayor:

This howling gives lie to the meme that people of color can 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' and be part of the culture of success that [the] right claims awaits in a level playing field.

Conservatives like to claim that hard work is the open route to equality. By all accounts Ms. Sotomayor has done just that - worked very hard and with a solid track record. But she gets no credit, since she is Latina.

Her brownness, in their reductive racism, means she was handed whatever she now has. This so utterly annihilates her long record of success that one wonders, in this framing, why any person of color should ever strive to play by the right's rules.

— Ralph W, Minneapolis

And this is really what it is: Conservative opposition to Sotomayor's nomination really lays bare the impossible situation into which American society places minorities. Sotomayor's life is almost too clichéd to write: she is the picture of Algeresque success that, on any other day, conservatives would use as an example of how minorities really can succeed in a cultural landscape dominated by whites. But here you see them opposing their own poster child, who--let's face it--isn't even that liberal, much less an "activist." Here's a judge who upheld the Global Gag Rule and even defended the racists who are now attempting to block her nomination.

It's the glass ceiling. The demagogues of the right just don't want a Hispanic, especially a Latina, to assume a position of power. This would be a non-issue if people didn't listen to them. Unfortunately, this is the United States, where the government is only as good as the people who elect it.