In quoting Judge Sotomayor’s statement that “a wise Latina woman” might make a better decision than a white male, he should have added the closing statement to her speech: “I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that, to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires.”

That seems to answer conservative complaints that she’s going to be making decisions based on identity politics. Check out Glenn Greenwald for examples of Sotomayor decisions based on law rather than her racial perspective.

In one case, for example, an NYPD computer guy was fired for emailing racist anonymous letters to various charitable groups (Negros are rapists! Jews control the media instead of real Americans! and similar sentiments). Sotomayor wrote a dissent arguing that since the letters were anonymous, on his own time and there was nothing to link them to the department but its own investigation, this was a violation of the guy’s free speech rights.

I doubt the right wing will give her any credit for that, of course, since the real issue is that she’s neither white nor male. And everyone knows that white males are the most qualified for everything.

One NRO writer, for instance, argued that sure, white people get special treatment—well-connected parents, legacy admissions to top colleges—but they use them to make something of themselves, whereas nonwhite people who get preferential treatment just use to skate through life and have everything handed to them. Because, you know, they’re just that way. As expressed here

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