Blog # 22

Sonia Sotomayor is only the first Hispanic justice and the third female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was born in Puerto Rico and raised by her mother and these are all things people paid close attention to when evaluating Sonia Sotomayor’s qualifications in becoming the Supreme Court of the United States.


When it comes to the qualifications people look at when it comes to picking the Supreme Court of the United States, gender and race are qualifications that are closely looked at. You can easily see that when looking at the number of Hispanic and females who have been on the Supreme Court of the United States. Because Sonia Sotomayor is Hispanic and a woman, when she was first being considered for Supreme Court Justice, people automatically assumed that she was a liberal.

After researching different articles on the internet I came to find some really disturbing things. One of the first articles I came across was titled, “Sotomayor: Passive Human Pinata for Mexican Obama and GOP” and it showed a cartoon of Sotomayor being hung like a piñata and Obama hold a bat saying, “Now, who wants to be first?”. According the article, which was written by Megan La Mamita Mala, states that, “The above is an editorial cartoon circulated by Creators’ Syndicate that appeared in The Oklahoman’s Tuesday editions. It depicts President Obama’s Supreme Court Justice Nominee, Sonia Sotomayer, as passive, docile human piñata, hanging from a tree while a cartoon Obama in a Mexican sombrero invited GOP elephants to take a hit. This cartoon was very, very racist and sexist. It was very degrading to Sotomayor’s and it hurt a lot of people. Even some of the GOP members asked for an apology. There were many other articles out there, including other articles by Mala, but this one really got my attention.