Sotomayor....?

I LOLed a bit when I read CNN's news article of Obama announcing Sotomayor as his pick for Supreme court. Why? Because Obama made a very big deal out of not choosing his pick based at the behest of special interest, along with suggestions that the pick would be purely based on who was most qualified. So who did we get? A Hispanic woman!! I had to LOL at that, in this case it's clear the choice was a compromise between various minority interest groups. As happy as I was about Obama winning, and despite the fact that I've agreed with most major policy decisions except perhaps some of the more controversial moral issues such as abortion, in the case I feel kind of like this is a joke.

It may be that Sotomayor is a very intelligent woman, but it also seems like she's very much caught up in a wave of an extraordinarily liberal understanding of the word "equality". Speaking as a minority, one issue I've disagreed with the Democratic party on for a very long time (since the 90s) is what that word means. Typically to the party it means that it's OK to discriminate against the white population in order to engineer more situations where minorities are unfairly advanced ahead of white people just because we feel like we need more minorities moving ahead with their careers. That's not equality, in fact it's not even a service to minorities it's a dis-service. It confirms in the minds of the raciest individual that minorities aren't smart enough to hack it on a level playing field, an assertion which I disagree with sharply.

Take for example (thanks Nikki) a case in which Sotomayor was recently asked to decide. Apparently the city of New Haven decided to whole sale throw out all firefighters promotion examination results because not enough, specifically, black people passed the test. In fact none passed with scores required to be promoted to Captain. It should be noted that individuals of about every other racial group (minority or not) were able to make it, including my own Hispanics. When the city realized this, they apparently decided that the test was racist, because apparently the firefighters could have been given oral exams which some how would have been more fair? Because what? Black people can't read? Some how I don't buy that particular argument, and I also find it quite offensive towards African-Americans because I KNOW THEY'RE BETTER THAN THAT! That's why I voted for one for PRESIDENT! Now she's going to be on the Supreme court to uphold what has been dubbed "reverse discrimination" (in my world all discrimination is equal, but whatever) come June? I guess this is one case where I would be sympathetic with the expected (by me anyway) Republican attempts to hold up Obama, and I hope that enough Democrats will see past party lines on this one and take a closer look at this candidate. They've managed to disagree with the President on one very important issue already much to my displeasure (Guantanamo), I hope they can manage it on this issue where it actually makes sense for them to stop the President.

On balance I still support Obama (in case there's any doubt after my little rant), but on this issue like a few others I just can't support him.