Smart suggests Sotomayor is "Latino". Well, no. She's Latina.

Gil makes me chuckle when he refers to Sonia Sotomayor as "Latino". Anyone that knows the first thing about Spanish knows that a woman should be referred to as "Latina".

This link says "In the United States, the term is in official use in the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino, defined as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race."[5][6]" So how is this a racial issue again?

Remember, Sonia Sotomayor was born in the Bronx, New York. Last time I checked, that isn't part of Latin America. But, OK, she has some Latin heritage and ancestory.

Think of it like this. It's sort of like electing an "African-American" President who's mom was a white woman from Kansas and he grew up on a tropical island in the Pacific where he was likely never exposed to slavery, segregation or racial hardship. Yet everytime the media mentions "he's the first African-American", they're trying to paint that exact racial image in an exploitative way.

They're doing basically the same with Sotomayor and "Hispanic". Nevermind that Democrats blocked Miguel Estrada in 2003 from the court using a partisan filibuster for the first time in history. That couldn't possibly be racially motivated (except for the memo that proved that it was racially motivated).

Anyway, Gil then goes on to refer to "Hispanics" in his column. This really made me chuckle. What does "Hispanic" mean? Well, the Romans called the Iberian Peninsula "Hispania", which the word "Hispanic" is derived from.

The interesting thing is that Portugal was also a part of Hispania. We've had a justice on the Supreme Court who's ancestors came from Portugal. His name was Benjamin Cardozo in the 1930's. So whenever the media says "Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice", it isn't actually true.



The first justice on the Supreme Court with Hispanic heritage, Benjamin Cardozo, appointed by Herbert Hoover (R).