The Problem with not Recognizing Racial Bias
Perhaps Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Hearings Can Be a Teaching Tool
Jul 18, 2009
Although the hearings of a Supreme Court nominee are supposed to be about the proposed Jurist's judicial record, temperament, and well knowledge of the law, this past weeks hearings for nominee Sonia Sotomayor seemed at many times all about race.
In a report filed by political talk show host Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program of the same name, Maddow opined about the role race plays in everything from the nominating of a member of the U.S. Supreme Court to an professional baseball umpire calling balls and strikes. She also had a rather interesting debate with fellow MSNBC political talking head Pat Buchanan, who was trying to make a case for discrimination against white people and how Judge Sotomayor was not qualified to be on the court because she was an activist judge.
Race Need not Further Divide Americans
The demographics of the U.S. are changing and as the 2010 census will show the trend is irreversible, therefore, what many political pundits including Pat Buchanan are having to deal with is the very real day when 106 of 110 U.S. Supreme Court Justices are white males is over. And with that new reality should also come the acknowledgement of past injustices with a look toward a more inclusive future for all Americans.
However as a recent New York Times article by Patrick McGeehan and Mathew Warren titled, Black-White Gap in Jobless Rate Widens in New York City , suggests that there is an obvious hiring bias in New York City that has resulted in the unemployment rate for blacks increasing much faster than for whites and other minorities. According to McGeehan and Warren, "unemployment numbers for blacks rose at a rate four times faster than that of their white counterparts and economists were not sure why the rate was so high for blacks," the article said.
It is Important to Have Minorities in Positions of Authority in Society
As America and the world becomes a much smaller place through the advent of the internet and other social networking technologies like Facebook and Twitter, and given the fact that four states and the District of Columbia have become majority-minority, the ability to reflect these changes in a positive way has become paramount for the continued stability of the American system of government. But in order to make manifest a more diverse and representative face similar to the make up of the U.S. population, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and African-Americans will have to be included.
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