I think I felt my head shrink while listening to Sotomayor interpret her "wise Latina" remark to the Senate. In fact, I think a couple of teeth fell out my mouth and a bone snapped while Sotomayor explained, in detail, how her Puerto Rican-ness wouldn't trump her fidelity to law. Baby, it was painful. The lone woman of color appealing to the mercy of the mostly white Senate. Sotomayor should have added: she would never eat platonos maduros, think in Spanish, contemplate colonization in the Caribbean, dance the merengue [if she even dances or likes the merengue], visit the Bronx or San Juan or the west side of Cleveland, help a young Latino attorney, or look at a Latino person [including her mother] while serving as a Supreme Court Justice. If Sotomayor doesn't consider adding these "Donts" to her no-more-Latino list she will never, never-ever, be trusted to interpret or uphold American law. If she adds these "Donts", she will be able sit among the great Justices and be neutral and unaffected by the burden and untrustworthiness of ethnicity. It's the American way. Again, I really believe my head shrunk.
Keith Josef Adkins is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and social commentator.