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By LEONARD PITTS JR.
A few words about identity politics.
That's the knock on Sonia Sotomayor, who was nominated to the Supreme Court last week by President Obama. If confirmed, Sotomayor, who is Puerto Rican, will be the first Hispanic to sit on the nation's highest tribunal.
That has traumatized some titans of the right. George Will, for instance, complains that ''she embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented, understood, empathized with only by persons of the same identity.'' Some go further, alleging that Sotomayor's ethnicity carried greater weight with Obama than her qualifications.
That argument would be a lot more persuasive if the right (Will, to his credit, was the exception that proved the rule) had raised it when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate on the basis of her chromosomal...
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