[Peace-discuss] Race & class

Sun May 16 11:09:04 CDT 2010

John's quotation is of course correct. The individual class backgrounds of SC
justices don't matter very much.  The question is, will they do the will of the
economic elite in a overwhelmingly business-run society?  Obviously, that looks
better when it's done by representatives of other classes, like Sotomayor &
Obama.  The institutions of the higher learning that they attended - Princeton,
Yale, Columbia, and Harvard - have as their primary job the education of the
children of the American elite and talented members of other classes who will do
the bidding of that elite.  That's where Sotomayor & Obama come from, and they 
both learnt their lesson well. They passed their examinations - fealty to the 
dominant class - with, so to speak, flying colors...  --CGE

On 5/16/10 10:06 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> As I recall, one of the reasons given for Sotomayor's nomination is that she
> was raised in the projects. Here's the wiki entry on that and a bit more (the
> law is less stressful than detective work????):
>
> "Sotomayor was raised a Catholic
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic>^[3]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-bg052609r-2> and grew
> up among other Puerto Ricans who settled in the South Bronx
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Bronx,_New_York> and East Bronx
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Bronx,_New_York>; she self-identifies as a
> "Nuyorican <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuyorican>".^[12]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-nyt-witn-09-11> At
> first, she lived in a South Bronx tenement
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartment_building#United_States_and_Canada>.^[16]
>  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-wapo061609-15> In
> 1957, the family moved to the well-maintained, racially and ethnically mixed,
> working-class Bronxdale Houses housing project
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_States>^[16]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-wapo061609-15> ^[17]
>  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-time-cover-16> ^[18]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-17> in Soundview
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundview,_Bronx> (which has at times been
> considered part of both the East Bronx and South Bronx).^[19]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-18> ^[20]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-McKinley-19> ^[21]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-nd-apt-20> Her
> relative proximity to Yankee Stadium
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Stadium_(1923)> led to her becoming a
> lifelong fan of the New York Yankees
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Yankees>.^[22]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Smith-21> The
> extended family got together frequently^[16]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-wapo061609-15> and
> regularly visited Puerto Rico during summers.^[23]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-mcc060709-22>
>
> Sonia was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_diabetes> at age eight,^[8]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Hoffman-7> ^[20]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-McKinley-19> and
> began taking daily insulin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin>
> injections.^[24]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-mh052809-23> Her
> father died of heart problems at age 42, when she was nine years old.^[7]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-nyt-mother-6> ^[16]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-wapo061609-15> After
> this, she became fluent in English.^[8]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Hoffman-7> Sotomayor
> has said that she was first inspired by the strong-willed Nancy Drew
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew> book character, and then after her
> diabetes diagnosis led doctors to suggest a different career from detective,
> she was inspired to go into a legal career and become a judge by watching the
> /Perry Mason <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason_(TV_series)>/
> television series.^[8]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Hoffman-7> ^[22]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Smith-21> ^[24]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-mh052809-23> She
> reflected in 1998: "I was going to college and I was going to become an
> attorney, and I knew that when I was ten. Ten. That's no jest."^[
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Smith-21>22
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Smith-21>]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#cite_note-Smith-21>"
>
> ^
>
> --Jenifer
>
> --- On *Thu, 5/13/10, John W. /<jbw292002 at gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
>
> From: John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Race &
> class To: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu> Cc: "peace discuss"
> <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Date: Thursday, May 13, 2010, 9:33 PM
>
> A big part of this trend toward "diversity" is that the US Supreme Court has
> set it in stone, more or less, in terms of the legal structure. Race and
> gender are protected classes and can elicit greater judicial scrutiny. But
> with only a few very narrow exceptions, class (i.e., poverty) has never been
> considered by the Supreme Court to be a protected class worthy of any special
> legal protection. Hence the saying by Anatole France is as pertinent in
> America as it is just about everywhere else: "The law, in its majestic
> equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and
> to steal bread - the rich as well as the poor."
>
>
> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 7:28 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
> </mc/compose?to=galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
> Walter Benn Michaels, "Chav chic, and respect the poor" (Le Monde
> diplomatique):
>
> ...at a time when class difference in the US is as high as it’s been in the
> last hundred years, we’re being urged not to talk about what we never talk
> about (the inequalities produced by capitalism) and to talk lots more about
> what we always talk about (the inequalities produced by racism). Why?
>
> Well, one answer, of course, is the absolutely central role race and racism
> have played in our history. But it’s not a very good answer. The
> extraordinary inequalities of the last 30 years were not caused by racism and
> the catastrophic consequences of the current crash will not be alleviated by
> anti-racism. Indeed, these days anti-racism is as much a part of the problem
> as it is the solution. In every neoliberal society, the response to more
> inequality has been a call for more diversity because the core commitment of
> neoliberalism is that the only inequalities we need to do anything about are
> the ones produced by prejudice.
>
> Walter Benn Michaels on anti-racism and diversity from "The Trouble With
> Diversity":
>
> We would much rather get rid of racism than get rid of poverty. And we would
> much rather celebrate cultural diversity than seek to establish economic
> equality.
>
> Indeed, diversity has become virtually a sacred concept in American life
> today. No one's really against it; people tend instead to differ only in
> their degrees of enthusiasm for it and their ingenuity in pursuing it.
>
> There’s no reason why people with a certain set of genes ought to be reading
> a certain set of books and thinking of those books as part of their heritage,
> or why, when they read some other set of books, they should think of them as
> part of someone else’s heritage. There are just the things we learn and the
> things we don’t learn, the things we do and the things we don’t do.
>
> Benn Michaels, from The Chronicle of Higher Education:
>
> The argument is that anti-racism today performs at least one of the same
> functions that racism used to — it gives us a vision of our society as
> organized racially instead of economically — while adding another function —
> it insists that racism is the great enemy to be overcome. But all the
> anti-racism in the world won't take any money away from the rich and won't
> give any of it to the poor.
>
> ###

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