Radio Derb Is On The Air: Sonia Sotomayor's Special Privilege
01/20/2013
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This weekend's Radio Derb podcast is up on iTunes and can also be listened to onscreen.  The transcript is here.

In the leadoff segment I tackle Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's interview on the 60 Minutes news show.

 [Audio clip:] "The first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was going to get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not. Now I didn't know about affirmative action. But from the tone of her question I understood that she thought there was something wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students."

I have to side with the school nurse here. There absolutely was something wrong. While private institutions ought to be free to discriminate in any way they like, Princeton is only theoretically private. They get scads of taxpayer money by way of research grants, student financial support, and so on. They should not be discriminating in favor of high-school students claiming some kind of minority status.

And what kind, anyway? Sonia Sotomayor is as white as I am. I have never seen any evidence that she or any of her ancestors suffered state-sponsored injustice at the hands of the United States. Why is she the recipient of favoritism?

Next question: Why is she so breathtakingly, hair-raisingly, toe-curlingly, stomach-churningly, spleen-splittingly insensitive? Did she not, and does she still not, understand why that school nurse would be vexed by Number One and Number Two students being passed over in favor of Number Three, just because Number Three had parents from Puerto Rico? She, this "wise Latina," really does not possess the few molecules of wisdom required to understand someone's resentment at elite colleges showing favoritism to Puerto Ricans? Including Puerto Ricans who would not look out of place at an Aryan Nations clambake? . . .

 

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