The right-wing fear-mongering against Sonia Sotomayor just keeps getting more and more comical. The latest grievance is her membership in the National Council of La Raza, a large national organization that bills itself as “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.”
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who spent his career in Congress calling for a moratorium on immigration, appeared on CNN to lambaste Sotomayor for belonging to a group whose name would translate as “The Race,” made the false claim that La Raza has the motto, “All for the race, nothing for the rest,” and bashed it as being “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”
The KKK without the hoods or the nooses? Um, those hoods and nooses do make a really important difference!
By the way, a literal translation is “The Race” (according to their Web site, other possibilities include “the people” and “the community”) and in the full linguistic context it refers essentially to advancing the civil rights and economic opportunities of Latinos. As a comparison, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People does not propose to oppress non-blacks, and the American Jewish Committee doesn’t aim to keep the Gentiles down.
Another group called Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) has its own strong statement, accusing her of belonging to “a racist organization called ‘The Race.'” Said ALIPAC president William Gheen: “The US Supreme Court is no place for brown or Hispanic supremacists like Sonia Sotomayor.”
