To: Brumar89 who wrote (55154 ) 6/2/2009 12:55:23 AM From: nigel bates Read Replies (1) | Respond to I'll let Jim Larison answer that one.amconmag.com Sotomayor’s remarks are preferable to other multiculturalist pronouncements in that she expresses pride in an actually existing culture rather than a generic celebration of non-whiteness. But at its root is a point of view where some cultures and heritages can be celebrated while others cannot (some are in fact denigrated). what Sotomayor’s critics never seem to do is to get to a point where they can show that she has applied this lamentable double standard. If she does hold such a view, we cannot determine this from what she said eight years ago, and even if she believed this it would still make no sense for conservatives to turn around and deplore her celebration of her culture and heritage by pretending that an unobjectionable statement is actually an expression of pernicious racism. By the rules her critics are setting up, woe betide the particularist or decentralist who wants to stress the importance of place and rootedness. The localist who bemoans deracination will be even more of a target than he is today. No one who wants to promote this agenda could possibly want that. After all, someone will be at the ready to declare that all of this is code for racism and other ills, and Sotomayor’s critics will have provided a very public, memorable precedent for misinterpreting statements in just this way...
