When the Senate Judiciary Committee holds its hearing this week on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, the ranking Republican member of the committee will be a white senator from Alabama named Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. Sessions, who has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Latina judge, has a very interesting personal history on racial matters. Now, I understand that senators on the committee will ask the questions and Sotomayor will answer them in some form or fashion. But I wish the tables could be turned so that Sotomayor could ask the following questions of Sessions:
1. Senator, you have called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organizations. Would you explain why you think organizations that defend and promote the civil liberties of black people are un-American and communist inspired?
2. Senator, you once called a white civil rights lawyer “a disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases. Would you explain why a white lawyer who defends the constitutional right of black people to vote is a “disgrace to his race”?
3. Senator, you have called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a “piece of intrusive legislation.” Would you explain why a law that protects the constitutional rights of black people to vote should be considered “intrusive legislation”?
4. When you were the U.S. Attorney in Alabama during the 1980s, a black assistant attorney testified that you made the statement you thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until you found out that some Klan members were “pot smokers.” Do you approve of the activities and racial viewpoints of Klan members who don’t smoke pot?
5. You once called that same black attorney who worked for you “boy” and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to “be careful what you say to white folks.” Is it your statement, senator, that black people who speak critically about white people are too uppity and should “be careful what they say to white folks”? Are you aware that black people consider the term “boy” to be a racial slur?
6. Senator, would you agree with me that it takes quite a lot of gall for someone who’s made as many racist remarks as you have towards black people to be criticizing anybody else as racist?
Thank you, senator. I’ll take that seat on the Supreme Court now.
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