Sotomayor and Identity Politics

This past week has been a rather painful week in national politics, dominated by the incredibly tedious and remarkably overplayed testimony betwteen the judiciary committee and Sonia Sotomayor. The comedians have gotten it right, basically showing that it has been a love fest between the Democrats and Ms. Sotomayor and a long stream of accusations of racism from some on the right side of the bench. It actually looks as if she will be confirmed with flying colors, only a few Republican senators actually voting against. And why not, she has an almost flawless record, and the accusations of racism are mostly because the GOP has nothing else. She is also moderate to the extreme, and it makes me wonder if Republicans aren't merely using this as a political platform to attempt to tread water in a tide of Obama.

The opinion makers have had a field day, from accusations of racism on the right, to accusations of being washed up white men on the left - none of which have much intellectual merit and amount to a national game of name-calling. But, what is interesting is that this is identity politics from the right, and the left is getting a dose of its own medicine with this, and they don't like it. Probably, the easiest accusation to level is the accusation of racism because all of us have inherent biases the play out in our personal and professional lives; the left has made a living accusing political enemies of racism, and it doesn't feel that good when the table is turned. This is not to deny the fact of dangerous, extreme racism, and more mundane, but still detrimental institutional racism, but the tit-for-tat that we have seen from the Sotomayor hearings is about what identity politics boils down to and public discourse of this flavor does very little for the real problem of racism, which is found more in the way institutions are run than in the way an obscure speech is given or even in a bad joke delivered. The latter are merely errors in judgment; the former are long term patterns of exclusion.

I would implore those who care about race to look at problems of exclusion more deeply than to jump at the opportunity to "expose a racist" with a tired and scripted narrative of public humiliation. Exposing racists does little more than ruining someone for a mistake and does nothing at all about systematic exclusion all too prevalent in our society, and the right's use of identity politics can give anti-racist activists a window into what their tactics actually look like.