Roots

When asked where I'm from my answer has always been "Jamaica." After I moved to the Northeast, I started saying "We just moved from Florida, but I'm originally from Jamaica." Jamaica is where I spent most of my life; where my family has roots and land.

Recently my 6 year-old son asked me "Mommy am I Jamaican?" My husband would love for him to think of himself that way, but in that moment I thought it was important to help him forge his own identity. I told him he is not Jamaican, but of Jamaican parentage. That seemed to satisfy him - for a while.

Some time later he asked, "Where am I from? Florida?" I said "Yes; Miramar, Florida." His next question, "If we live in New Jersey for a long time will I be from New Jersey?"

My not-yet-first-grader is already struggling with his identity. To a child that age, a year is a long time. His memories of our old house, his old schools, his old friends, are all beginning to dull. I understood and began to feel his concern.

We may very well move again in a few years. We may spend as much time in the next state as we do in this one. We leave behind, no land, no relatives, very little history. Where will my sons' roots be planted? Will they feel rooted at all? How will they identify themselves?

As my husband and I watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we saw people weeping for their great personal and material losses, but vowing to return to New Orleans from the places they took refuge. My ever-practical husband couldn't understand why they would want to return to 'the bowl.' I understood. New Orleans is what they knew. It had been their home for many generations. Their roots were planted firmly there.

Neither he nor I have any plans to return permanently to the land of our birth, but I still had a strong, stomach-twisting emotional reaction when my parents recently decided to sell my childhood home . None of us have lived there for many years, but I still unhappy about the sale. I felt like I was losing a chunk of my foundation.

To feel like you are losing bits of your roots - to a hurricane, to migration, to whatever - is painful. What must it feel like to not have roots at all?

Racist my ass

In high school you may have joined the Inter-School Christian Fellowship because the group reflected your Christ-centered values. If you left Jamaica for a college state side you may have joined a social or advocate group representing Caribbean students to get you a sense of home. Who ever thought seeking interaction with those who share common beliefs, race or heritage could be thought of as prejudiced?

Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor is being harangued by Republicans Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Tom Tancredo for being proud of her Puerto Rican heritage and for her membership in Hispanic civic and professional organizations. Gingrich and Limbaugh have called Judge Sotomayor racist. Tancredo has taken it a step further and likened La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group of which she is a member, to the Klu Klux Klan.

These rants from the right have been revolting, offensive and just plain dumb. Students and professionals everywhere belong to organizations that represent their sex, country of origin and race. The suggestion that all those people are racist or sexist because they self identify as women, Black, Hispanic, Native American - or whatever - is ridiculous. The arguments are so ludicrous as to make me think that Tancredo and the others could not possibly believe it themselves.

Unfortunately for the Republican Party - which I have to be sure has some level heads - these are the voices that are getting the air time. (Likely because their bizarre suggestions make sensational television.) Today, they are voices and faces of the GOP. As the party's face, they are alienating, not only Hispanics (who, ironically, they need to win elections), but every other group that can recognize true racism.

To oppose Sotomayor's nomination based on disagreement with her judicial philosophy is one thing. To unfairly label her a racist, to attack the reputation of a venerable civil rights group, is desperate. It is cowardly. It is, clearly, the old rusty kettle calling the new shiny pot black.

Justice by the law

Federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been nominated by President Obama to the United States Supreme Court. If confirmed, the highly qualified New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent will be the first Hispanic and only the third woman to sit on the federal bench.

The president had declared that he would be searching for an 'empathetic' justice. He seems to have found that with Sotomayor, who has contended publicly that she believes judges' life experiences should color their legal views.

Not surprisingly, conservative Republicans have taken up arms in criticism of this nominee and her view of her judicial role. Their argument: the law is to applied according to the letter; not interpreted through personal frames of reference.

At the risk of having my party card revoked, I agree with the conservatives on this one. The outcomes of cases before the Supreme Court should not depend on whether the justices can personally relate to the plaintiffs or the defendants arguing before them. The High Court's rulings affect Americans across the country of every hue, racial background and socioeconomic status. To make personal perspectives fair for all, the Supreme Court would need to represent every ethnicity, income level and psychology. It is only in the strictest application of the law that we can be assured that all of our interests are protected. The only issue of interest to the justices - and to every judge - should be which of the arguing parties meets its burden of proof or presents the best argument according to the law. I feel safer when only those factors are at play. I suppose though, that if even that (the very letter of the law) were not debatable there would be need for only one Supreme Justice, not nine.

Going by the word of the pundits and talking heads that have come out to babble since Tuesday morning, Sotomayor is all but confirmed to be Supreme Justice Sotomayor. I hope she serves with distinction and wears the robe without consideration for from whence she came, because "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences" does not necessarily "reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." (Paraphrase from Judge Sonia Sotomayor) That is why we all rely on the colorless, unempathetic and blind law.