Is Striving For Another Racial And Ethnic Record Endangering Our Being?

Political correctness is nothing more than censorship. It puts restrictions on what we can and cannot do and say. Many believe in our attempt to be politically correct we have taken it to an extreme. My question today is this. Have we taken it to such an extreme we are putting ourselves, our culture, our strength and ability to survive as the greatest nation on earth at risk?

I mostly began asking myself this question during the 2008 presidential campaign when I heard over and over, that we needed to elect our first black person to be president of the United States as well maybe the first female president. I have no problem with that and I hope you don’t either. But did we elect our first black person president for that reason only? Probably not but intelligent thought can tell us that it is likely that a certain number of voters cast their ballots only because Barack Obama is considered black.

Have we become somewhat obsessed with the idea that making historic firsts involving race and gender are more important than finding the best qualified person to do the job at hand?

Some people believe that every aspect of our lives should be a reflection of our society. Well, it is to some degree and there is certainly nothing wrong with working toward a better understanding of social and ethnic differences. We have worked hard over the years to find ways of mixing and matching and integrating races, as well as attempts to educate our citizens to the diversity in culture that other people were once a part of. Does there come a time when striving so hard to create diversity in race and culture become a danger to our own society?

Just yesterday, President Obama announced that he would like to see Sonia Sotomayor sit on the bench of the United States Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Is she the best candidate for the job? Is she the most qualified? Did Obama pick her because she was a woman or that she was Hispanic?

Again, when discussions prior to Obama’s selection focused on who the president might pick, many said it was time that the first Hispanic sat on the court. I don’t have a problem with that. Some even went so far as to say it should be an Hispanic woman. I also don’t have a problem with that. History would be served if the appointee was of Hispanic decent they said.

When you take your car to the repair shop, let’s say for a brake job. Do you want the best person qualified to fix your brakes? It could save your life or are you more concerned whether the mechanic works at a firm that is racially and ethnically diverse? Maybe you never thought about it.

When your kids start school and they get on the school bus, are you concerned about who is driving your kid to school? Do you want a good, safe driver, well trained and not a child molester driving your kid to school? Or would you be more interested in making sure that all bus drivers have racial and ethnic representation? The same can be asked about teachers.

One day you learn that you have a brain tumor and the only hope of survival is surgery. Do you want the best surgeon around or are you more interested in whether or not brain surgeons are well represented racially and ethnically?

Recently in Hartford, Connecticut, firemen took an exam hoping for a promotion. After the exam, it was determined that it was mostly whites who scored high on the exam and that there wasn’t a good enough representation of race and ethnicity in the high scores, so the test was throw out. A lawsuit ensued and when the case reached the Second Federal Court of Appeals, the decision to throw out the test results was upheld. Judge Sonia Sotomayor was one of those judges who signed onto the ruling opinion. But this is not really my point.

During debate over this action, one night while watching the news, I heard one man who lived in Hartford being interviewed by the news reporter. The man made a statement that went like this: “It is most important that our fire departments are a reflection of our society, racially and ethnically.”

In other words, this man was saying that it mattered not to him whether the firefighters who showed up at his house to fight a fire and perhaps have to rescue him or his family were not necessarily the best trained, only that they were diverse of race and ethnicity.

Surely this man couldn’t have meant what he said. If that were true, we would need to begin structurally changing a lot of things in this country to reflect the racial and ethnic percentages of our society. Where should we start? Professional sports?

If you will recall when President Bush had to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, he picked Harriet Miers. There was outrage. Not that she was a woman but because she was not the most qualified person for that position. Many of us felt at the time that President Bush felt obligated to replace outgoing Justice Sandra O’Connor with another woman, even if it meant not filling the job with the best candidate.

Is President Obama making a similar decision in his option to nominate Sonia Sotomayor? I am told that Obama’s short list of four finalists where all women. Does this tell us that there are no men in the United States who are qualified to server on the Supreme Court or was Obama’s focus on satisfying the cries of his people that they wanted to make history….again?

What I find disturbing are the reasons given to appoint her and many of the comments Sotomayor herself has made.

Obama made it very clear that he was looking for someone who would be “empathetic” in their decision making process. Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod said recently that Sotomayor would be ready to adapt the principles of our Constitution to a modern day concept.

Those promoting the nomination of Sotomayor seemed quite focused on her life story as though it somehow should be the deciding factor in her qualifications to be a Supreme Justice. She herself is recorded as saying she felt a Latino woman, having lived a trying life, could make better judicial decisions than a white man who hadn’t.

These are all disturbing factors for those of us who treasure the U.S. Constitution as it is written. We can only hope these difficulties will be considered during upcoming hearings. The United States Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. Nothing should get by them. They, as a group, have to uphold the very Constitution that has held the country together and made it strong.

I heard Sotomayor yesterday say that she believes that the rule of law is what keeps this country together. That’s not what I wanted to hear from an appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Perhaps that would have been a great statement coming from a newly appointed chief of police. For a Supreme Court justice, I would rather have heard that they believed that the U.S. Constitution is what has made America great and for us to continue on a strong path in retaining liberty and justice, we need a justice who fully understands that document of what it meant when it was written and that it means the same thing today.

Like the brain surgeon about to take your life into his or her hands, do you want the next Supreme Court Justice to be the best qualified or someone who makes history because they would be the first Latina to sit on the bench?

It’s your call.

Tom Remington