Another proud baby of affirmative action

USA Today
Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, July 10, 2009 in
Forum commentary, Race Issues/Civil rights - Forum Permalink
Commentary By Laura E. Gómez

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's speeches are like a Rorschach inkblot test: We hear what we want to hear. A few weeks ago, The New York Times reported that in a speech from the early 1990s, Sotomayor acknowledged that her Puerto Rican heritage played a role in her admissions to Princeton University (where she graduated summa cum laude) and Yale Law School (where she was a top student). Her comments may take on new meaning for opponents of affirmative action in light of the Supreme Court's decision last week in the firefighters' case.

Here's what I hear in her remark that she is "an affirmative action baby." I was admitted to Princeton and other Ivy League colleges 10 years after Sotomayor, having attended a public high school in Albuquerque where many students never graduated. Four years later, I graduated with honors from Harvard. Later, I earned two degrees at Stanford and, while clerking on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, I was hired to teach law at UCLA. In 2001, I became the second Latina tenured by a Top 20 law school.

Full Commentary: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/07/another-proud-baby-of-affirmative-action-.html