Wave Editorial: Hearings begin with new dialogue on Supreme error

Story Created: Jul 17, 2009 at 11:32 AM PST

Story Updated: Jul 17, 2009 at 11:32 AM PST

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We knew the issue of affirmative action would arise at her confirmation hearings, given Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s role on a three-judge panel’s upholding of the practice as carried out by a Connecticut municipality. Still, this week’s Republican attacks on the Supreme Court nominee are striking for their tone deafness on the legacy of racial discrimination in America.

On that issue, however, one good thing has already come as a result of the relentless GOP harping: Under questioning Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), Sotomayor managed to offer a reasoned defense of policies that promote diversity and guard against the twin legacies of institutional racism and sexism.

When it comes to the awarding of jobs or admissions slots in a public school, she testified, “There are situations in which race in some form must be considered — the courts have recognized that” to be sometimes necessary to ensure fulfillment of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Carefully legalistic? Absolutely — and by necessity — in a forum that her opponents would like nothing more than to produce the complete “meltdown” one of her chief critics acknowledged it would require to keep her off the high court. It was also refreshing considering Sotomayor’s two most recent predecessors in this particular hot seat — far-right ideologues who, in just three years, have already succeeded in setting back the cause of racial equality in employment and education.

At this point in history, when Americans are clearly more accepting of diversity at the highest ranks of government, Sotomayor’s progressive views will be welcomed on a bench that is moving too quickly in the opposite direction.

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