Wise Latinas feom around the country have come to the defense of Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor in an article for the Associated Press (link below).  Among those interviewed was Dominican-born novelist Julia Alvarez, who had this to say:

“ . . . a white man with impeccable credentials like Sotomayor’s doesn’t have to cite his background because it’s the “default” experience, which society has always assumed is the right and impartial one.

“So, if someone like Sotomayor makes a claim for her own background and gender and ethnicity and age and endurance as ‘credentials’ that allow her to access certain ways of seeing a legal issue, everyone raises the outcry of BIAS BIAS BIAS!” said Alvarez, whose parents were born in the Dominican Republic.

“There is a presumption that if you’re white and if you’re male, neither of these things inform your life, but if you are of color or a woman, somehow that is your defining trait,” said Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a professor of social and cultural studies at the University of California-Berkeley.

“What I find troubling is people of color and women are the only ones being asked those questions,” said Garcia Bedolla, who was born in the United States to Cuban parents.

Justice may be blind, but justices are human, each with their own experiences, virtues and philosophies. “We’re not robots,” Sotomayor told the senators.

For the complete article go to http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hoYIUx4kf3P1I8mRSJdUjq8JAL7gD99F6GF00

Photo: Ceneta/AP for the New York Daily News.