The Sotomayor "Syndrome"

That bent, humble, penitent posture of supplicants to the dominant, white, male power/elite, who demand a full retraction, as humiliating as possible-a ritual of self-abasing groveling--from any person-of-color aspiring to even nominal parity in that system who has ever in their public life had the unmitigated temerity to rebuke or challenge, or otherwise call attention to white USer racism; and a blow job.

She is not the first to experience it, of course. But seldom before has it been so central a focus, so apparently potent a wedge.

Because I am beginning to think she might be vulnerable to the charge to which Obama himself will be rhetorically, if not factually, challenged. White people cannot imagine that somebody who has ever experienced the conditions which they themselves are in denial about but still realize the existence of, could EVER not use the first chance they got to get even. Even a whiff that she might not actually bow to their privileges automatically sets her up for disqualification.

It is part of a conscious, premeditated strategy to marginalizethe Obama regime as threats to white power and privilege--to RACIALIZE it, explicitly, if we were going to be frank. That was a never-too-deeply buried subtext during the election campaign, too. Obama, who ironically has worked hard to distance himself from evidencing too much 'empathy' for the poor--his FEMA's trailer generosity notwithstanding--and the concerns of minorities and other disempowered citizens--as could conceivably be imagined--is being accused of betraying white power to the less powerful, anyway.

This has always been a result that could/should have been anticipated given the range of possible constructions available from hegemonic imagery and rhetorical lexicons. Indeed, I predicted it more than a year ago.