Concerns Surrounding Judge Sotomayor Prompts Us To Look Into The Myth Of The “Angry Latina”

An interesting post on RaceWire today got us thinking about the myth of the “angry Latina.” The blog post concerns The New Republic writer John Rosen’s article on his misgivings concerning Judge Sonia Sotomayor - the woman who may very well be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. “Angry Latina” is most definitely a phrase that’s been thrown our way before and, at the time, it instantly made us angry (while, ironically, in the state of being Latina) to think that when we become upset or passionate or loud or aggravated, it has something to do with our ethnicity. When does a person get to earn, we wondered, the luxury of just being mad?

Before we delve into that, however, we have to clarify that while our musings here are inspired by RaceWire’s post - titled “New Republic Attacks Judge Sotomayor With Sexist, Racist ‘Angry Latina’ Meme” - we don’t agree with the content. For instance, as evidence of Rosen creating an “angry Latina” meme where Sotomayor is concerned, RaceWire directly quoted this paragraph from his TNR article:

But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

We don’t, personally, see a problem here. What did catch our attention, however, was this:

Her former clerks report that because Sotomayor is divorced and has no children, her clerks become like her extended family–working late with her, visiting her apartment once a month for card games (where she remembers their favorite drinks), and taking a field trip together to the premier of a Harry Potter movie.

We’re not sure we’ve ever heard of a male in a leadership position “adopting” his underlings “because (he) is divorced and has no children.” The assumption that a woman requires children and, in the absence of any biological offspring, is biologically or psychologically compelled to find surrogate children is like something out of a fairytale. Quaint. 

We point this out because, in the past, we’ve had commenters tell us that we are either stretching to make a case where an allegation of discrimination is concerned, or that by focusing on “small stuff,” we lose sight of the bigger issue and more obvious instances of racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. So, in that spirit, we do think that the allegation that Rosen is supporting the idea that Sotomayor is an “angry Latina” is off-base. We just don’t see any evidence of it in his article. We did, however, find this thought interesting:

The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench,” as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. “She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren’t penetrating and don’t get to the heart of the issue.” (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, “Will you please stop talking and let them talk?”) 

Now, juxtapose that with this paragraph:

“I know the word on the street is that she’s not the brainiest of people, but I didn’t have that experience,” said one former clerk for another judge. “She’s an incredibly impressive person, she’s not shy or apologetic about who she is, and that’s great.” This supporter praised Sotomayor for not being a wilting violet. “She commands attention, she’s clearly in charge, she speaks her mind, she’s funny, she’s voluble, and she has ownership over the role in a very positive way,” she said.

This points out, rather beautifully, why we’re no longer as bothered by allegations of being an “angry Latina” as we were in the past. We fully comprehend that pissed-off Latinahood is not something inherent in us, but a label projected onto us by people for a variety of reasons: They’re small-minded, they’re ignorant, they’re nervous, or  they’re fairly lazy and, as such, resort to tropes and stereotypes. 

The beauty of this realization is that we can relax. We know that we can’t, ultimately, change the way others think. There’s nothing that we can say or do, no mode of functioning that we can try on for size that can be guaranteed to sway people who genuinely believe that we, by virtue of being born Latina, exist primarily below the neck. We can’t change the fact that people think our anger is more potent than Anglo rage, that it must have been baked under a tropical sun or cooked up on a barrio sidewalk. We can’t alter the fact that people project poetry and figurative language onto our bodies, describing our anger as boiling our blood, or searing our skin, or emanating from our pores like vapors rising off a recipe in a Laura Esquivel novel. 

Our anger is like anyone else’s. We’re not angry because we’re Latina, we’re angry because our eyes are open. And we’ve finally reached a point where we can own and be proud of our anger - something that, for a woman (because ladyhood is a huge portion of what it means to be a Latina - whatever either of those mean), takes a bit of time. We’ve had to filter out guilt and expectations of being sweet or complacent or yielding. But we’re finally ok with being angry. And if Judge Sotomayor should happen to get pissed off at some point while on the job? We’d be  ok with that, too. 

New Republic Attacks Judge Sotomayor With Sexist, Racist “Angry Latina” Meme [RaceWire]