Word: african-americans
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...minority judges have essentially different perspectives than white male judges. "No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people-of-color voice," Sotomayor said in her "wise Latina woman" speech, citing Justice Clarence Thomas as representing a "part but not the whole of the African-American thought on many subjects." In other speeches, she has emphasized that her view of justice requires understanding the different perspectives of the clashing parties rather than imposing her individual perspective. In a public-service dinner at Columbia Law School in 1999, she said, "I am learning that to begin thinking...
...than in majority opinions that appellate judges often reveal their true feelings. Of Sotomayor's 19 published dissents, only three dealt clearly with racial issues, and they pointed in different directions. In a 1999 case, Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education, Sotomayor would have allowed a 6-year-old African-American student to challenge as racial discrimination his school's decision to demote him from first grade to kindergarten. In Pappas v. Giuliani (2002), Sotomayor would have held that the New York City police department may have violated the First Amendment when it fired a police officer for his racist...
...decades ago, an African-American leader in a synagogue might have been about as likely as an African American in the White House. But Stanton's ascendancy reflects the slowly changing face of America's Jews. According to Diane Tobin, a demographer with the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research (IJCR), some 20% of American Jewry is now non-Caucasian. While there is no data specifically on black Jews, "a large percentage [of nonwhite Jews] are African American," Tobin says. "Most arrive via conversion, adoption or mixed Jewish-black marriages," she adds, "and are far from Judaism...
...neither he nor Stanton - a divorced single mother to Shana, 14 - is unaccustomed to the impact of race in America, particularly in the South. Indeed, leaders of the Alabama synagogue where Stanton trained for a year as a student rabbi never believed their white congregation would accept an African-American at the pulpit. Complaints were lodged and calls were made. Yet by the end of her training, the synagogue was deeply saddened to see her go. "Everyone has their initial impressions and outmoded stereotypes," Stanton reflects on the experience. "But these people came to embrace me and my child...
Thanks to other high-profile rabbis, such as Capers Funnye, the African-American leader of Chicago's Beth Shalom B'Nei Zaken synagogue - and First Lady Michelle Obama's second cousin - mainstream American Jewry appears ready to embrace leaders like Stanton. And with African Americans becoming increasingly drawn to Judaism, in part because of the shrinking perception that they are not welcomed by white Jews, the IJCR's Tobin say the timing could not be better for American Jewry to finally reconsider who and what makes a Jew. "Due to assimilation and intermarriage, the stability of the American Jewish community...