Sotomayor represents opportunity for Blacks

The recent Supreme Court nomination of 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor should only help cement President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party’s relationship with the nation’s largest minority group. This appointment also provides an opportunity for African-Americans to strengthen the Black-brown coalition by enthusiastically supporting the first Latina nominee to the Supreme Court.

Before the 1990s, most African-Americans did not encounter Hispanics outside New York, Texas and the Southwest. While I was raised primarily in Detroit, where most of the people I met were either Black or white, I spent my junior high school years in the Bronx at Jordan L. Mott Junior High School on the corner of College Avenue and 167th Street, not far from the neighborhood where Sotomayor grew up 15 years earlier. In the Bronx, African-Americans, Dominicans, Jamaican immigrants and Puerto Ricans mixed regularly, and until they began speaking, it was sometimes hard to tell who was who. Though there were the typical schoolyard fights over handball games and coconut icees at recess, for the most part, everyone got along.

While the pundits spent much of last year wondering whether Blacks and Latinos could play well together politically, there are many examples of Blacks and browns ending up on the same side of the electoral schoolyard. In New York, Latinos supported David Dinkins for mayor in both of his campaigns, and Blacks went with Freddie Ferrer, the Puerto Rican Bronx borough president, when he ran for mayor in 2001 and 2005. In fact, Ferrer won the Rev. Al Sharpton’s endorsement over C. Virginia Fields, the only African-American candidate in the 2005 Democratic mayoral primary. Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative, African-American and 2002 candidate for the U.S. Senate, won a majority of Hispanic votes in the Texas Democratic primary even though a Hispanic was in the race.

Despite this picture of electoral harmony, everything is not rosy. Though African-American voters were a key part of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s winning coalition in his second race, they did not support the first modern-day Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles initially, instead choosing James Hahn, son of a popular white politician. Also in Los Angeles, there have been numerous Black and Latino flare-ups between students and gangs. Nationwide, polls show that significant numbers of African-Americans are concerned about the competition for jobs between Black and Latino low-wage workers.

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