A UNIQUE UNDERSTANDING

Judge Sotomayer backtracked on her comment about “a good Latino woman” which suggested that she brought special insights that would make her a better judge. She was right. She should have stuck to her guns.

This is not reverse racism. Let me try to explain. There is a reason why minority groups are over-represented in issues of social justice and political change. There was a reason why, in earlier days, there seemed to be so many Jews, like me, standing up for the rights of the oppressed. We were among the founders of the NAACP, recognizing as we all did, that the oppression of us was the oppression of all people.

When you are part of a group that is under siege, whether it is Jews or blacks or Latinos, you develop a very special understanding of oppression. Unfortunately, that us not always so. Many members of minority groups, once they have penetrated the barrier of discrimination, turn their backs on social causes and become, as in the case of many of George Bush’s personal advisors, more right-wing than the very people who once oppressed us.

When Phil Graham, the senator from South Carolina, suggested that if he said “I will be a better senator than others because I am a white, Caucasian male, it would have been political suicide.” Graham. Like many others I have met, simply does not understand. Being a white Caucasian and comfortably in charge of his world, there is less compulsion to make change. He is far less aware of inequalities simply because he has not lived them.

I know what Sotomayer was saying. I am only sorry that she did not make the point that when you are yourself a member of an oppressed minority, you have larger insights, greater empathies, more profound sympathy, when it comes to others.

So there is, Judge Sotomayer, more in you than you will admit – even to yourself. Your very being is tied to a fight against injustice, and a fight to survive and succeed in a hostile environment.

I know. I know. There are people, usually comfortable members of the majority, who will say: “:Get over it. Stop being so sensitive. Rise above it all.”

You guys are talking in your sleep, the smug sleep of self-satisfaction.