By the way, here are Sotomayor's exact words showing her racist and sexist views. The first was said, nearly word for word, in seven different speeches. The second she has repeated nearly identically numerous times in speeches and itnerviews.

"I want to be perfectly clear about this next comment so that there is no mistaking my words to mean something other than what they plainly say: the time has come to end white male oppression by castrating every white male until they are no longer dominant in Western culture. That means forcible removal of their testicles. I realize the brutality of my comment, and I don’t know how to say it more clearly."

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion."

Clearly she thinks a "wise Latina woman" is superior to all others. Why else would she imply that a "wise Latina woman" reaches "better" conclusions than any other judge - clack, white, Asian, or otherwise.

So tell me again how I lie when I say she is a racist and sexist bitch?

Let's look at her cases...

In Ricci v. DeStefano, she was part of a panel ruling against a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. -- they objected after the city threw out the results of a promotion test because too many white firefighters, and not enough minority firefighters, scored high.

SCOTUS itself reversed her decision and declared New Haven's decision violated Title VII.

In fact, 5 of 6 of her cases brought to SCOTUS before she became part of it were overturned by it and the sixth case disagreed with her reasoning. She makes judgments based on race and sex, not based on rule of law or true equality.

Now that I have provided clear and irrefutable evidence, I hope gavrilop will recant his libelous comments. Not that I will see them unless I take special effort (as I did to see his latest one that prompted this reply)

She and two other judges summarily dismissed the case without tackling the complex issues outlined in stacks of briefs and debated in extended oral arguments. Instead, the court issued an unsigned, one-paragraph opinion. Sotomayor's colleague, Judge Jose Cabranes, was so concerned that he wrote a lengthy dissent highlighting what many saw as an attempt to bury the case.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/26/sotomayors-judicial-record-battlefield-critics-advocates/#ixzz2Y8zMl8RT

My copy/paste from her record obviously got a little out of order, but it is all there in electronic "print".

Draugnar is a fucking dumbass. I realize the brutality of my comment, and I don’t know how to say it more clearly.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/sotomayor.asp

@Draug

Sorry, but your first quote doesn't even pass the snopes test (http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/sotomayor.asp).

Just What Is a 'Wise Latina,' Anyway?
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1910403,00.html

OK, digging deeper confirms that is wasn't said. So on that account, I was fooled the same as many others. It appears to be a satire piece from carbolicsmoke.

http://carbolicsmoke.com/2009/06/02/obama-says-sotomayors-castrate-white-males-comment-taken-out-of-context/

The second quote, however, is not inaccurate.

Draug,

I suggest you take a long, hard look in the mirror, because I think (hope) you're better than this.

That first quote is abhorrently outlandish. With only a functioning brain stem, you should have realized if that quote was real, she would have never been confirmed by the senate. But your hate for her is so strong you didn't take the (literally) 1 minute of research required to realize it was a fake press release from a satire new site. Your irrational hate has blinded you to simple facts and you should be ashamed.

I assumed it was said in a metaphorical way. (i.e. castrate in a sociological manner such as affirmative action does).

"I assumed it was said in a metaphorical way. (i.e. castrate in a sociological manner such as affirmative action does)."

Really?

"That means forcible removal of their testicles."

Yes really. Even that can be metaphorical. Look up the word metaphor...

And I still stand by my judgment based on one simple fact. 5 out of 6 cases of hers that went before SCOTUS were overturned, including one where she ruled that promoting blacks over whites was acceptable when the whites had *better* test scores just because New Haven was afraid they would get sued.

Anyone who's interested in Ricci v. DeStefano, I encourage you to read the district court judgement, which the Second Circuit's three-judge panel, including Sotomayor, did not find cause to overturn.

http://www.ctemploymentlawblog.com/uploads/file/ricciusdc.pdf

It's interesting argumentation from both sides. Part of the city's defense was, essentially, that they might *have* misinterpreted Title VII because the law's requirements *are* complicated. But they said that if they made a mistake, it was only an honest mistake, motivated by their desire to *comply* with the requirements of Title VII.

The court ruled, therefore, that there was no discriminatory intent, no conspiracy to deny the plaintiffs their civil rights, and the city could not be held liable for attempting to comply with the law. That's all that Sotomayor upheld.

A reasonable person can make arguments that the city should have interpreted Title VII differently, and that's fine, but there's no reason to think that *anyone* involved in this case was trying to do anything except act in accordance with the law.

> 5 out of 6 cases of hers that went before SCOTUS were overturned

Cases like this:

"In one case reversed by the Supreme Court, Sotomayor and the majority on the appeals court ruled that an inmate could sue a private corporation for injuries he suffered in a halfway house run by that company. Though the company operated the house on behalf of the Bureau of Prisons, Sotomayor argued that the company was not shielded from liability. The Supreme Court reversed the appeals court decision in 2001."

So what? That's not even about race. Draugnar the liar is citing this as evidence of racism.

Let's not overlook Draugnar's sexism in choosing that particular slur against Sotomayor. A person can (wrongly) think she's a bad judge, but there can be no justification for calling her a bitch.

Lol. I went back in this thread and counted the word "racist" no less than fifty time and all from one side. Using that word is such a knee-jerk reaction. Why that word is quickly losing its bite because it is tossed around so easily and usually at the wrong time.

Alternatively, it's used so often because there's still a ridiculously huge amount of racism around.

I must confess having had quite the laugh at Abge's:

"" "I assumed it was said in a metaphorical way. (i.e. castrate in a sociological manner such as affirmative action does)."

Really?

"That means forcible removal of their testicles." ""

Draug: I'll give you that much and more can serve as a metaphor. Context is usually the key element to determine how a particular image is used. But you have to admit that, generally, when a comment is followed by "That means X", it's usually a sign that a metaphor is being unpacked, and its intended meaning made explicit.

In this particular (fake) quote, I believe such is the case.

My read on this, when I assumed it could be true, was that some words were missing (you indicated the quote was not perfectly word for word) and that she may have meant repeat sexual offenders. While even that position would be pretty radical, I could have wrapped my mind around it. All that to say, it never once occurred to me that the quote was presenting a metaphor.

I would like to point out, also, that you all seem to be working with a fairly different concept of racism. I've made the claim, earlier, that racism is a social construct. That was very short and I left it unexplained. And though I know your interest in such matters is great (!!!), I will still shy away from giving a class on gender and racial studies.
I will, however, point to the various ways you have of understanding what is racist to say this, that the concept obviously doesn't denote something akin to a chair, something easily identifiable under a definition. But while there is generally no objective meaning to racism, that is, no way to list the necessary and sufficient conditions of what is racist, not all of your views are equally valid. A lack of objectivity doesn't amount to pure relativism. We don't have to work in extremes like that; there is a whole continuum between the two.
In my very humble opinion, racism is something that is measured against a number of narratives: the narrative of your current utterance, that installed by your past utterances where the new one fits, the narrative set by the social and historical context of your speech act, etc. Some stuff more readily appears racist. And yes, Krellin and Draug, some of the ways you have of presenting your ideas are, your intentions notwithstanding, reeking of prejudice.

I want you to note how I disregarded your intentions there... That's another key point.

Language is not yours to do what you want with. It has its rules, set by social practices and their histories, and it has values attached to some of its uses (true or false, good or bad, racist or inclusive, etc.). Presenting your ideas in a certain way, even if you intend that not to be racist, will rightfully be understood as racist where you use linguistic tools, if you will, that are tied to such values.

So I said I wouldn't give a class... And I won't. I'll stop here. But if I did end up giving a tiny class nonetheless, let the lesson be this: be aware that you are not entirely free to do of language what you will. While it is a very malleable material, one that can bend to most intentions, there is always a setting where the words you use will be recognized and judged relatively to a shared set of practices that you do not control. While that doesn't make objective the meaning of a word (think of 'nigger', the value of which has drastically changed throughout the past 2 centuries), it does provide a normative background that justifies and invalidates some uses.

I hope this helps a bit. Even just a tiny bit.

And I'm sorry if this was long and a bit professor-like. I don't mean to pretend I know better than all and if someone has some good insight on these subjects, I'm happy to discuss them. But I guess you don't spend years of your life training at something without that something surfacing when the occasion makes it relevant!

So let us touch on the two specific examples thus far. The use of thug and the fact that the media insists a Hispanic is white or whitewashes him (pun intended) with the ne'er before used in that context, "white Hispanic" label.

Re: thug - I am a midwesterner and thug has never meant anything racist to the best of my knowledge and I daresay if you asked any teen in my small city of Fairfield or the town I grew up in of West Chester (a neighbours or of Fairfield) that they would have no clue to it's supposed racist implications. A thug where I grew up and where I live is a bully with the violence level amped up. The thugs in school carried a switchblade in their back pockets. Now it is probably a concealed snub nose. But tye point is the same. In my communitiy and I would suspect across much of Midwest and rural America a thug has no racist connotations. Maybe in the inner cities like Cincinnati proper or Indianapolis as bo_sox seems to indicate he has been called a thug but is "the only white person [he] knows who has been called one" but urban/inner city is veru different from suburbs and rural America.

Now, someone tried telling me sometime back (it was bo) that calling someone black.instead of African-American was racist. I called bullshit on that too as not every black person is "African-American" in descent any more than every native American is even classic "Indian" (and I hate that term) as there are Native Americans from the deep north of Canada and from Mexico. America is bigger than the US and all indigenous people are Native Americans.

So context of *where* a person is from puts context on a word. "Nigger" has always been slang amd always been derogatory, even before the Civil War. But black is not derogatory to the best of my knowledge and I do not see how it can be racist when our President takes pride in being black.

In so far as *what* race a person is, it is their own self identification that makes them black or white or Hispanic. I have 1/8th Lakota in me (which is ironic considering I went to Lakota High even though my family is from Kentucky and Indiana). But I identify white cause I was raised that way and my only Lakota traits are a lack of body hair. Obama identifies as black and Zimmerman as Hispanic. So I assert the news programs calling him white were being racist or at least trying to increase racial tension to male it.look like white on black crime.

Rebuttals?

" "Nigger" has always been slang amd always been derogatory" NOT always derogatory. It is used freely and widely in our CURRENT culture. You just have to be of a privileged race to use it safely...a notion I wholeheartedly reject. I think everyone shoudl be able to freely use it if one race is free to use it. My being called a racist for using the word is a racist accustaion.

You are spot on about thug.
Again...the racists here are the ones calling racism in everything they don't like.

It's not just where you're from, Draug...
It's more importantly the context of your speech act itself, the people who are the receivers of your utterance. In the current context, for example, you're addressing a crowd that includes a fair number of what you would maybe call liberals and, in some cases, intellectuals. If you want what you intend to communicate to make it across, you have to be aware of their context of reception as well.

H.P. Grice, "Meaning", 1955 (if memory serves me well), is a good article to get an idea of what I mean here. It initiated an intellectual movement which I would say is more or less the norm nowadays. (http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Courses/PHI534-2012-13/Nov19/Grice-meaning.pdf)

Yes, Cach, one must consider their target audience. But that doesn't male one racist just because they use a common term like thug that has no racial.connotations in their normal circles and so isn't said with any intent. It doesn't male.one racist to say "black man" when.is his circles using.the word black merely denotes that they are from a different race. Racism isn't just noticing a person.is of a different race, but believeing they are inferior because of that difference. I can easily recognize a black mam as black without thinking he is inferior because he is black. Recognizing race and culture is a good thing. We should embrace our heritage and stop trying to make everyone the same. We should recognize, embrace, and celebrate the differences.

I'm still working on the definition of is.

What we should do is one thing.

How one can justify saying a certain utterance (and the utterer) is racist another.

And bare in mind it's less about considering your target audience as it is about fulfilling your intentions in communicating a certain meaning.

If I only I could tell you the number of students who came to me saying: "But that's what I meant to say!", to whom I had to answer: "Maybe, but that's just not what you said." Some of your interventions here, Draug, and some of Krellin's, were problematic to say the least, regardless of your intentions.

As to how we ought to "evolve", if you will, in order to be able to be inclusive... that's another debate. And I quite honestly think that the word 'race', in and of itself, is contrary to that design.

I agree that the use of the word race is problematic as it carries a negative connotation. That is why I acyually prefer the term heritage. But I still want to make clear that diversity of heritage does not mean convergence or homogeneity. That diversity needs to be with celebration of the differences. I celebrate many Jewish holidays despite being Christian and I and my Chinese friends at work (there are three Chinese folks in my office) always go out and celebrate the Chinese new year every year and one of them.is teaching me a bit of written Chinese by printing phrases on my white board which forces me to go look them up but I am learning the meaning behind certain characters and combinations. That is celebrating our differences.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/dershowitz-no-jury-would-convict-zimmerman-of-murder-unless-afraid-new-black-panthers-might-kill-them/

Hey Invictus, before posting a URL with such an inflammatory title, why don't you answer my question?

The behavior of the media covering this case has been beyond disgusting. That, we can all agree on.

Absolutely. and honestly, this is one of those cases that, without the media, no one but the locals would care about. It's not like either person was a high profile person.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmerman-convicted-murder-manslaughter/story?id=19598422#.UdoVDW0zSqJ

Invictus, that URL is extremely misleading. But the story is right.

Luckily, (despite the best efforts of the race baiters and gun grabbers) it turns out that Florida residents still have the right to defend themselves.