“At that time, few Latino lawyers were available to fight against discrimination against Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, particularly in the areas of voting and jury rights, school desegregation, and access to higher education,” said MacDonald, who is the author of Latino Education in the United States:A Narrated History.
Dr. Jorge Duany, a professor of anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, and author of the book The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move:Identities on the Island and in the United States, said that, similar to President Obama’s historic election last year, Sotomayor’s expected confirmation as the first Hispanic justice does not necessarily signal that the United States is a “post racial” society but that it is moving toward that goal.
“It’s certainly a multicultural and multiethnic society, and its major institutions should mirror this fact,” Duany told Diverse.
Duany added that Sotomayor’s public visibility as both a Latina and an American should help to “dispel unfounded fears of the ‘Hispanic threat’ to the American national identity.”
The U.S. government established Puerto Rico as an official U.S. territory in 1898, and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917, yet the U.S. Supreme Court has never had a Puerto Rican nominee until now, Duany said.
“That the (nominated) judge is a U.S.-born Puerto Rican is even more significant, given that more persons of Puerto Rican origin now live in the U.S. mainland than on the island. I hope that her tenure in the Supreme Court will help to raise more public awareness about the relations between Puerto Rico and the United States,” Duany said.
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