Sotomayor and Our Changing Demography

This piece originally appeared on NDN.org.

First, as someone who has been encouraging our nation's leaders to better understand and adapt to the rapid growth of our Hispanic population, today is a very satisfying day. Despite her incredible qualifications as a judge, Sonia Sotomayor was not a safe or easy pick. I applaud President Obama, and the Senate, for having the courage and confidence for giving her a chance to serve on the highest court of the land. When she was chosen a few months ago I released this statement:

President Obama's historic pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court is an acknowledgment and affirmation of the great demographic changes taking place in America today. Driven by years of immigration, our nation is going through profound change. The percentage of people of color in the United States has tripled in just the past 45 years, and America is now on track become a majority-minority nation in the next 30-40 years. The movement of our nation from a majority white to a more racially complex society is perhaps the single greatest societal change taking place in our great nation today. And if the Supreme Court is to have the societal legitimacy required to do its work, its Justices must reflect and speak to the people of America of the 21st century. The pick of Judge Sotomayor, a highly qualified, twice-Senate confirmed Latina to serve as one of the nine judges overseeing our judicial system, will not only put a thoughtful and highly experienced judge on the Supreme Court, it will go a long way toward making the Supreme Court one that can truly represent the new people and new realities of 21st century America.

Second, I am not surprised that a large majority of the Republicans in the Senate voted against her. As I discussed at our immigration event earlier this week (see this writeup on the right-leaning site CNS), racial intolerance has been at the very core of the Republican Party's political strategy and ideological argument since Lyndon Johnson, the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts of the mid 1960s. It become known as the Southern Strategy, and it was this most conscious exploitation of racial fear -- Welfare Queens, Tax and Spend, Willie Horton, now criminals crossing the border -- that perhaps more than anything else drove what we have called the recent Conservative Ascendancy to power in recent years.

We also know today, however, that the conditions which created the opportunity for the success of the Southern Strategy have become a relic of 20th century politics. But the current Congressional Republican leadership, all brought up and schooled in the successful era of the Southern Strategy, knows no other politics. They are like an aging baseball pitcher whose fastball no longer pops, or a TV sitcom long past its prime. They throw that pitch and it gets hit out of the park, that funny joke now falls flat, and these same racial conceits thrown around during the Sotomayor hearings bounce off an America whose people and attitudes towards race are very different from the America of the Southern Strategy era.

Today's Republican Party is an almost entirely white party in an America which is now one-third non-white. They are an aging party, holding on to a politics while once successful no longer works in the much more racially diverse America of the 21st century. And this lack of diversity and long history of racial intolerance has taken its toll on the Republican brand with this fastest growing non-white part of the population, Hispanics. In a tracking poll taken last week the favorable/unfavorable ratings for the Democratic Party with Hispanics was 53-31; the Republican Party 4 percent favorable, and 85 percent unfavorable. The ratio for Congressional Democrats with Hispanics 46-34; for Congressional Republicans 5 percent favorable and 83 percent unfavorable. 4 and 5 percent! These are truly incredible numbers.

As I said in my remarks on Tuesday I think that for the Republicans to get back in the game they will have to do more than just change their racial tune, elect a few more minorities, and begin this long process of modernizing their approach to race. They will have to eventually acknowledge and repudiate their intolerant past, and their shameful exploitation of racial fear as a national political strategy. But today that day seems a long way off, and I have no doubt that the father of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, if still alive today, would be holding his head down, ashamed of what his once proud Party had become.

For more on the issues in this essay see this backgrounder, On Judge Sotomayor and America's Changing Demography.

Follow Simon Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ndn729

Comments

[johnashman]

Using liberal 'logic', Democrats overwhelmingly voted against Clarence Thomas, therefore, Democrats are all racists who hate black people and black people have all joined the Republican party.

Either that or Republicans and Democrats vote for SC nominations based on their ideology, rather than race. Because it can't be both. 23 times as many Democrats voted against Thomas as Republicans. He's one of the best we have because he understands the Constitution and is willing to overturn bad law or reverse bad applications of it. Sotomayer apparently isn't. Well, I guess we'll see.

The best way to get a liberal judge on the SC is to nominate a woman or minority, preferably both and then call anyone who votes against them 'sexists' or 'racists'. I'd have voted against her and risked the label There are better people out there and many are also women and/or minorities.

[havbrush2]

I'm African American and I, my friends, family and mostly all the black folks I knew then were against Clarence Thomas (and still are). We knew who he was, a self-hating beneficiary of affirmative action who turned against it once he had made it. He also turned against his own family still living in poverty in the south. And yes, we were all Democrats who knew what time it was and were not fooled by Daddy Bush putting forth a sham black face into nomination. And our being anti-Thomas has proven to be prescient as he has voted against every case that has come before the Court that would benefit the middle class, working class and poor. He's renowned for never opening his mouth to ask a question during oral arguments. Come on! Does he already know everything or is mind already made up? Apparently ,since he sides with Scalia 99.99% of the time.
Yeah, we know the deal with Clarence Thomas. The Rethugs on the other hand who voted against Judge Sotomayor just revealed their blatant racism and it will hurt them for years as I doubt they'll every get another wise Latina or Latino to vote for them again.

[johnashman]

Please explain why he's "self-hating" because he refuses to accept the mantle of victimhood handed to you by Democrats.

Turned against his family? You mean like Obama?

A SCJ is not there to create fairness or benefit the poor, he's there to make sure that the law follows the Constitution as it is written. If you want the Consititution to be something else, then use the amendment process. And if you understand the Constitution, the arguments are just window dressing. 90% of the oral arguments are just trying to convince a judge to twist the law. I could decide most of these cases in about 2 seconds because it's obvious. Case in point "We want to take someone's land and give it to a private corporation for development" BANG! "Unconstitutional, next!!!" Scalia and Thomas and Roberts and Alito were right, the lefties were wrong and the results of that case speak volumes.

When you use the term 'racist', please take a long look in the mirror. You are one of those keeping racism alive and well. Good luck with that. The rest of us are moving on, with or without you.

[PeterLoffredo]

Hmmm... So, the GOP lost on the Stimulus plan that they said was going to ruin the world (and of course all the GOP governors accepted the dough and took credit for the work its doing), they lost on Sonya Sotomayor, who was a "reverse racist," and was going to destroy the Court and the country (and of course, they voted for her and will seek the Hispanic vote on that line), and they will lose on health care, which they've been screaming about turning the country into a Communist dictatorship (which of course, they'll take credit for it when their constituents are enjoying the benefits of cheaper health care).
Has there ever been a more blatant, two-faced group of hogs and old, white pimps than this GOP? They rile up the Deliverance crowd of their base with racist diatribes about a "Kenyan" stealing away "their country," then they try and suck up to average people by taking credit for Obama's initiatives.
I used to ask regularly on my blog, how stupid are we? But now I have to ask, how stupid do they think we are?
Peter Loffredo
http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/

[johnashman]

Mmmm, no, the Republicans said it wasn't going to do enough and the bill later was going to be brutal. They favored pure tax cuts/holidays to get the money into the economy now, not in two years. All of it.

Personally, I think you're pretty stupid. You clearly don't understand the arguments being made.

[johnashman]

Well, that's because Republicans *don't care* what race you are. They only care what you believe and how you act. They feel she unfairly allowed racial discrimination not based in the law. This is pretty obviously what happened. I don't know why she did, whether it was because she is a latina or because she just made up law to fit, but either way, she's not quite good enough to sit on the SC. I wish she were, but she's not. We need the best, not the 'also rans'. What race they come from doesn't matter. Walter Williams would be a better justice than Sotomayor because he understands the Constitution far better and he is a black man, or so he tells me when I hear him on the radio.

It's not about race, never was. Republicans don't think that way and Democrats can't understand that because they can't stop thinking about race.

[Weiwen Ng]

I wish for their own sake that the Repubs had seen a highly qualified judge who was willing, some controversial statements notwithstanding, to apply the law as written and voted for her. That's what the Democrats did with John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Frankly, Sotomayor will be a far better justice than either.

[johnashman]

But what about all the judges that were hung up in committee without ever getting a vote?

Democrats sat on many of Bush's nominees for years, keeping a whole lot of work from ever getting done and creating a huge backlog.

What about Bork, one of the most brilliant legal minds of this century? And all those that got "borked" (it's pretty bad when a name evolves from what Democrats do to conservative judges).

[KipFromCalif]

Nice article Mr. Rosenberg. Its incredible that the Republican Party continues to be so clueless to our changing demographics. There was a very recent poll here in California that showed the Republican Party is 79% white; in a state where whites are already down to 43% of the population. This is also a very liberal, blue state. Imagine what the percentages must be in some of the red, southern states. If you think of where the future trend lines are here and the rest of the US, having a less diverse party seems like political suicide.

[wanttruth]

Well said.

[slc1950]

As they say - some people simply don't get it.