Would Sotomayor Be the First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice or Was It Cardozo?
By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's been widely reported that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, though a few people (including some TV commentators) have wondered whether Justice Benjamin Cardozo (on the court from 1932-1938) should not in fact be counted as such.
The answer seems to be that Sotomayor would in fact be the first Hispanic, but it also points up the problem inherent in the term Hispanic.
Cardozo, Josh Marshall reports, was of Portuguese ancestry (Cardozo biographer Andrew Kaufman says that Cardozo "family legend" has them coming from Portugal, but without "firm documentation about the particulars"). Which brings us to the critical question: What sort of ancestry qualifies as Hispanic? There are three strikes against the Cardozo-as-Hispanic thesis, all having to do with the fact that Portuguese natives speak ... Portuguese (rather than Spanish).
- A TPM reader notes that the Associated Press defines Hispanic as coming from a Spanish-speaking country, and distinguishes Hispanic from those of Brazilian and Portuguese descent.
- Webster's dictionary defines Hispanic thusly: "Of or relating to the language, people, or culture of Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America."
- The U.S. Census uses the Office of Management and Budget's definition of Hispanic: "The term 'Hispanic' refers to persons who trace their origin or descent to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central and South America, and other Spanish cultures."
Portugal is on the Iberian peninsula, but is most certainly not Spanish. So Cardozo is not Hispanic. Or, presumably, Latino (the Census asks people whether they are Hispanic or Latino, since the words have different meanings in different parts of the country). Which brings up my larger problem here: The obsession with Sotomayor potentially being the first "Hispanic justice," like discussion in politics of the "Hispanic vote," assumes Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and so on to be a monolithic group who all care about the same set of issues. It's just not so (I have some firsthand knowledge here, having married a Puerto Rican)—the different groups have different perspectives and different issues that motivate them. They react differently to, say, normalizing trade relations with Cuba, how to handle illegal immigration, etc.
But of course U.S. politics rarely acknowledges this fact.
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Tags: Supreme Court | Hispanics | Sonia Sotomayor
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Hispanic definitions that include persons of Portuguese origin
The U.S. Department of Transportation defines Hispanic to include, "persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or others Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race."[14] This definition has been adopted by the Small Business Administration as well as many federal, state, and municipal agencies for the purposes of awarding government contracts to minority owned businesses.
California Public Contracts Code Section 2051 provides a definition of Hispanic that includes the Portuguese.
(c) "Minority," for purposes of this section, means a citizen or
lawful permanent resident of the United States who is an ethnic
person of color and who is: Black (a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa); Hispanic (a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin regardless of race); Native American (an American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, or Native Hawaiian); Pacific-Asian (a person whose origins are from Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, Samoa, Guam, or the United States Trust Territories of the Pacific or including the Northern Marianas); Asian-Indian (a person whose origins are from India,
Pakistan, or Bangladesh); or any other group of natural persons
identified as minorities in the respective project specifications of an awarding department or participating local agency.
Ladino
Clearly Justice Cardozo is ladino. We are being racist in making this classification. It appears that the majority of you want to exclude Benjamin Cardozo as Hispanic and Latino. Cardozo was Jewish but, he wasn't ashkenasi, he was sepharadic. Sepharadic Jews have origins from Spain. Portugal was part of the Kingdom of Leon but it was still oroginally a part of Spain. Cardozo was born in the US of spanish/portuguese heritage. He is excluded as Latino because he was Jewish. So as a result of our racism Cardozo is not hispanic/latino. So what was Cardozo? Cardozo linguistically was hispanic, he could speak Spanish. He also spoke Ladino, ancient Spanish written with the Hebrew Alphabet, it's the Sepharadic counterpart to Yiddish. Give credit where credit is due! Despite hardships, Benjamin Cardozo accomplished a lot in his day. Can't we remember him in a positive light?
Cardozo spoke LADINO you morons!!!
Cardozo, whose full name was Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, spoke ladino (also known as Djudeo-Espanyol, see Torah Tropical under "En Ladino se Dize" for a historical analysis or Google "Ladino") in his youth. Although many have asserted that Cardozo himself claimed not to follow the customs of his Iberian ancestors (Aviva Ben-Ur, "East Meets West: Sephardic Strangers and Kin," Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (New York: New York University Press, 2009), p. 86.), others say that this referred to not practicing Religion as did his ancestors.
His full family name includes "Mendes", "Cardoso" and "Seixas". Although many have tried to link these strictly to Portuguese origins, the reality is that the surname Cardoso (or Cardozo) is based on a region of Spain. The last name Mendes and its variants are shared by both Spaniards and Portuguese. However, Seixas is mostly Portuguese.
Many have also argued that because he did not consider himself a "Hispanic" that therefore he was not one. So I ask you all if an African American, Native American, Eskimo, Hispanic or other minority decide not to consider him/herself of his race or ethnicity does it make them anyless a member of that group? The flawed nature of this argument also confirms that the definition of "Hispanic" as applied today (it was not in use during the FDR administration) creates enigmas such as an individual from Venezuela with the last name Sadovnic, Levine or BenDayan to be labeled as "hispanic" in census taking procedures but yet they are actually the first generation of immigrants to be born in Venezuela from Russia, Holland and Morocco respectively.
So, basically according to the US Census definition of "Hispanic", "A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish Culture", Benjamin Cardozo is a "hispanic". Paolo of NY makes the mistake in assuming that 'Hispanic" is a race, it is not. Again, the flawed definition of "Hispanic" allows Europeans (Spaniards specifically) to be classified as "hispanic" although they are obviously Caucasian.
In the 1980's or 90's a local Miami based bank was sued by the Federal DOJ for not having an "Affirmative Action Quota" amount of Blacks in their employ. Throughout the proceedings, the bank presented numerous employees that had been classified as "hispanic" but were actually Black from Cuba or other Spanish speaking nations. The bank won the lawsuit.
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