With President Barack Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to the Supreme Court, the long-standing debate about judicial activism has been — or rather, should have been — brought front and center in the nation’s consciousness.Unfortunately, due to a snafu of media exaggeration and public outcry, this debate — which is one of the most important issues of our political system — is being relegated to the back burner.As is so often the case, Sotomayor’s opponents have found potentially damaging quotes and decisions the veteran judge has made and taken them dangerously out of context. Their aim in this process is simple: to deflect discussion away from her impressive resume to rally public sentiment against her nomination.Conservative leaders and pundits are using these examples to try to stick the label “reverse racist” on Obama’s pick — in a craven attempt to play on the ever-lingering racial suspicions America still grapples with.The first is a single quote: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Although this quote sounds damning on the surface, few in the media are providing the nation with the appropriate context. This excerpt is from a speech Sotomayor gave at a conference celebrating Latinos making a difference in the country. In her speech, the judge was proposing that diversity on a court is extremely useful, especially when it comes to race-related cases. Sotomayor was saying that a “wise Latina woman” would have a better background to understand a case related to Hispanic racism — this only seems logical.Besides, to portray Sotomayor as a racist, opponents have to ignore comments in the very same speech — she applauds that “seminal decisions in race and sex have come from courts composed exclusively of white males,” she doesn’t believe “different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding a different group,” and she maintains “judges must transcend personal sympathies and prejudices.”The second example opponents invoke is Sotomayor’s decision in Ricci v. New Haven. In that case, Sotomayor voted to uphold a previous court’s refusal to overturn the case of a white firefighter whose job was taken by an African American with lower testing scores.Even if the decision is unfair — which it almost certainly is — the fault lies in the law, not in Sotomayor or the rest of the judges in the court’s decision. Sotomayor and her colleagues made a decision on what they thought the law required — it’s hard to accuse her of racial motivations when she voted to uphold a previous decision in a majority vote. Although both of these examples seem to be damning evidence of racism on the surface, they are both taken out of context. Opponents neglect to research — or conveniently fail to mention — a simple and telling statistic: In the 96 cases of racial discrimination Sotomayor has heard, she has ruled in favor of the accuser a mere 10 times. In addition, she has ruled in the majority all but four times.In light of these statistics, it seems almost silly to accuse Sotomayor of being a racially motivated maverick. Yet this is exactly the image her opponents are attempting to portray.Not only are these tactics an elaborate series of political cheap shots, they are extremely detrimental to the discussion about her nomination. Instead of racially charged accusations, the real focus should be on the question of her judicial activism.Instead of trying to determine whether Sotomayor will attempt to overthrow the white race with her decisions, the discourse should be focused on whether she will uphold the law or legislate from the bench. There are very legitimate reasons to believe that she is, in fact, activist — although, ironically, Ricci v. New Haven is a powerful example of a strict interpretation of the law.It is perfectly legitimate to criticize Sotomayor for being activist, because the evidence to this effect is strong.But until much more convincing evidence — evidence that doesn’t immediately collapse under even perfunctory unbiased research — is found, it is not appropriate to accuse Sotomayor of “reverse racism.” Doing so exploits and exacerbates racial tensions, and it prevents a truly meaningful analysis of her judicial worth.        Matthew Albright is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Baton Rouge.
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