Voice your opinion

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about there being more to unite than to divide Black and White New Orleanians. This announcement comes in the form of a poll of Orleans voters as the city approaches the mayoral race of 2010.

What has some New Orleanians cheering as the results of this poll are discussed is that Whites and Blacks were identical or very close when it comes to the importance they placed on the issues of crime, education and economic development.

We did not need a poll to tell us that Black people care about the same important issues that everyone else cares about. We did not need a poll to show us that Black people want to live in safe neighborhoods, want quality educational opportunities for their children or desire the opportunity to advance economically. And that’s just one small part of what is wrong with this we’re “more alike than different” propaganda.

If we are so alike, so united—why is the national unemployment rate for Blacks nearly double that of Whites? Why do only 55 percent of Black students graduate from high school compared to 78 percent of White students? If we are really all in this together, could someone please explain why one in four African Americans live in poverty compared to one in 12 Whites? If we are so much the same, why are Black Americans, who barely make up 13 percent of the country’s population, half of the prison population?

Though these are national figures, they are echoed at state and local levels, especially in urban areas. So as this mayoral election of 2010 approaches, any candidate—Black or White—who fails to realize and speak to those enormous disparities and disproportionate representations as it relates to African Americans with a plan to directly combat those issues for Black New Orleanians, will do himself and this city a disservice.

That’s what we think. What cha say? Are Blacks and Whites in New Orleans or in America really more alike than we are different just because we all want the same things? 

Latching on to a statement made by Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor and working it for all its worth, conservatives appear primed to force a battle over President Obama’s nomination of Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice.

Sotomayor, 54, is a federal judge who grew up in Bronx housing projects and attended Princeton and Yale. If confirmed, Sotomayor would replace outgoing justice, David Souter, on the Supreme Court and become the first Hispanic woman to serve. But it seems that this milestone will not happen without some controversy.

The latest—opponents are pointing to a speech Sotomayor made nearly eight years ago at UC Berkley.

First here’s some context.

In a speech at Berkley, Sotomayor referenced a saying of then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion in a case.

Now, here’s sentence Sotomayor’s exact sentence:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said.  

To us at The Tribune, it seems that Sotomayor was simply saying that as a Latina woman in American, she believes that she would bring a different perspective—that who she is and that her experiences that not many White men or woman share with her influences her views. We don’t see that as bad or racist. In fact, it is just plain true, a part of this human condition we are all afflicted with. Her appointment, we think, might bring to the nation’s highest court a fresh perspective it sorely needs.  

Yet, this is what conservatives the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh are pointing to call Sotomayor racist. And we also think that if this is all Newt and Rush and other Republican bullies can come up with the block Sotomayor—one statement made eight years ago and taken out of context—then their fight will soon fade. 

We want to know what cha say? Were Sonia Sotomayor’s comments racists or just a harmless statement now taken out of context?