Sonia Sotomayor meets Tuesday with Harry Reid and a bunch of other senators who look, well...a lot like him. Former Ms. magazine editor Elaine Lafferty on how white guys lost their groove......Quite soon, likely this week, Sonia Sotomayor will arrive on Capitol Hill, where she will be greeted by a gaggle of lawmakers. With some exceptions, nearly all of them will be white. Most will be men.
It must be said: These guys are doomed. Picture it for one solemn moment. All of these dark-suited white male politicians, with their crisp shirts and red coordinated ties, will be embarrassingly lacking the key critical appendage required in American politics today. Through elections and re-elections, grueling fundraising dinners and various travails required for elevation to the highest offices in the land, they thought they had it all! And until now, darn it, they did. They had what was needed to make it in America.
... somehow, that you are a 54-year-old Hispanic woman from the Bronx…and then if you imply, let’s say in an address to an academic audience, “Hey! I’m thinking I’m a 54-year-old Hispanic woman from the Bronx and that’s going to have something to do with how I look at the world…and oh, by the way, I’m thinking that may even give me a better perspective on the tapestry of global human experience than a rich white guy from Greenwich, Connecticut….” ...
....But here’s the good news for those doomed identity-less white guys. You actually do have an identity! You are in fact a minority in America. Embrace your status, file a brief, find your own voice. Because judges like Sonia Sotomayor, what with their identity and their empathy, who have spent a lifetime outside your members-only clubhouse, may be more willing to listen to you than you ever thought possible.
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