Sonia Sotomayor's public statements are, like those of all recent Supreme Court nominees of both parties, being subjected to absurd hyper-scrutiny. But one statement by Sotomayor is deeply vexing, that her "national origins" impact her judging. Her national origin is American!
News accounts and cable-news shouting are depicting Sotomayor as some kind of exotic species, especially "from" Puerto Rico. Judge Sotomayor speaks of herself in these terms. But she's "from Puerto Rico" in the same sense we are all "from the Olduvai Gorge." Sotomayor was born in New York City, which means she was born a U.S. citizen. She was raised in New York City. Her parents were from Puerto Rico, but she has never lived there. For that matter, her parents were American citizens. Her national origin is American!
Some of the galimatias regarding Sotomayor's identity has to do with lack of understanding of Puerto Rico's confused legal status. But how can we speak of Sotomayor as anything other than a red-white-and-blue American? Why does she speak of herself in any other way? Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, to parents descended from Slovakians. It would be absurd if Roberts suggested his "national origin" was Slovakian or that this gave him any special status; his national origin is American. Justice Samuel Alito was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to parents descended from Italians. He sometimes talks about his Italian ancestry, but it would be absurd if Alito suggested his "national origin" was Italian or that this gave him any special status; his national origin is American. Sotomayor goes further and refers to her parents, who moved to the Bronx from Puerto Rico, as "immigrants." Puerto Rico is part of the United States!
Quick version of Puerto Rico's confused legal status: it is a self-governing colony most of whose residents are U.S. citizens who have no vote for president or representation in Congress, but also don't pay federal income taxes. Anyone born in Puerto Rico since 1941 has been a United States citizen at birth; most people born on the island between 1899 and 1940 received naturalized citizenship. You can't "emigrate" from Puerto Rico to New York, though you can move between the two places. It reflects ignorance when people make comments along the lines of "too many Puerto Ricans are being allowed into this country" -- there's even a line close to that in "West Side Story!" -- since most residents of Puerto Rico hold U.S. passports, coming and going within the nation as they please.
Maybe having Sotomayor on the Supreme Court will cause the United States and Puerto Rico finally to resolve the nutty relationship they have had since 1898. I'd say give the island a star and make it a state. Its situation regarding the mainland does not seem materially different from the situation between Hawaii and the mainland when Hawaii won its star. Statehood has been a huge boon for Hawaii, and likely would be a boon for Puerto Rico. Many residents oppose Puerto Rican statehood either because they want an independent nation, or because they want to retain most of the privileges of U.S. citizenship but not pay income taxes. Whatever the outcome of the island's status dispute, it is ridiculous for commentators to treat Sotomayor, or Sotomayor to treat herself, as a quasi-foreigner.
And this is skipping the excruciating contretemps about whether she would be the Court's first Hispanic (Benjamin Cardozo's ancestors were from Portugal, which is Iberian but not Spanish-speaking) or whether she is Hispanic (this word's only clearly agreed meaning is "someone born in Spain" -- the Census Bureau has been arguing for decades about what "Hispanic" means) or whether she is Latina. Factually she is the later, in that word's meaning of "descended from Spanish-speakers." But that meaning is so mild it hardly carries any weight -- a person descended from German-speakers would be laughed at for claiming special status as a Germana. Anyway why are we fussing with all these hollow contentions of identity politics, and why is she? The Senate should weigh her candidacy simply as that of an American jurist.
Here is the 2001 speech in which Sotomayor suggests she possesses some kind of non-American "national origin" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?pagewanted=print, and also in which she makes the dubious assertion that a Latina woman is better than a white male. Setting aside that it's perfectly possible to be Latina ("descended from Spanish-speakers") and white -- an example of why such identity labels are loopy, and "American" is always preferable -- the speech is learned, candid, engaging and well worth reading. Possible Supreme Court picks should be encouraged to set forth their philosophies in thoughtful speeches and writing, rather than hooted down by the political shout-show circuit for any comment beyond admiration for Thomas Jefferson. Nasty hyper-reaction to judicial statements only results in possible Supreme Court nominees who never say anything in public except empty blandishments. How is the public served by that?
And one last thing that I wanted to point out was that, he is just ignoring history by trying to dismiss her own asserted identity, Who does he think he is to do that?. Italian Americans, Germans and other who migrated to the US were subjected to a heavy acculturation process in which they were forced to assimilate; the melting pot view. The great migrations of Central and South Americans (caused by the disasters the US provoked in their countries) were characteristic in which they resisted such assimilation (and suffered for it) and that is why there are very strong latino/hispanic identities in the US.
There's fascinating chapter in Roger Deakin's magnificent book "Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees" in which he tracks the origin of the apple tree to the forested mountainsides of Central Asia's Eden, the Ferganna valley, and to the glacier-fed northern slopes of the Pamir mountain range between there and China.
http://www.amazon.com/Wildwood-Journey-Through-Roger-Deakin/dp/1416593624
And Cardozo's ancestors left Portugal during the Portuguese inquisition in the 16th century. What is the point of even opening that box?
I think we should learn to properly pronounce "Puerto Rico" before making it a state, though. We could make them change the spelling to "Porto Rico" instead as a condition of statehood, I suppose, although I'm no more enthusiastic about that than I suspect they would be.
Also,"Hispanic" or "Latina" is not a word describing an ethnicity at all. It means a Spanish speaking person from South America or Mexico. A Hispanic can be black, Native American, Asian, Jewish or a white person whose parents came from Europe but not necessarily from Spain. A lot of South Americans came from Germany or the Netherlands. They speak Spanish the same reason American-Italians in New Jersey speak English: Because that is the main language of the country.
Ethnically speaking, there are very few differences between people from Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. So if the U.S. feels the need to find different words for different ethnic groups from Europe, they should be divided into southern/western and northern/eastern Europeans.
I agree that Hispanic/Latino is more about culture than about race. Generally, it refers to cultures born to or affected by the colonization of the Americas (the continents!) by Spain. These cultures all share a certain heritage, the most noticeable aspects being the Spanish language and a strong Catholic presence. Within the Hispanic cultures, as you said, you can find whites, blacks, and any other race.
Are you talking about Puerto Rico or Texas?