Denver – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings shows how difficult and sensitive the issue of racial profiling can be.
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Speaking with young students in Denver, Sotomayor noted that some people asked whether authorities had done enough to track the two suspects, both ethnic Chechens.
“Is that profiling? Could be,” she said. “Is it something you just can’t ignore? Maybe sometimes not.”
Sotomayor, who was in Denver for the dedication of a new state courts building, said police who rely only on racial profiling to decide if someone committed a crime are usually wrong. But she said investigators need to pay attention to some “indicators” about suspects, without saying what they might be.
“It’s a fine line society walks in trying to be fair,” she said.
Sotomayor, who became the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court when she took office in 2009, said she was the subject of racial stereotyping after her appointment, and it was hurtful.
Her biggest challenge was dealing with other people’s low expectations, she said, “and having fun proving them wrong.”
Sotomayor took questions from about 100 eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders before ceremonies to open the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center.
Shortly after Michael Bender, chief justice of the state Supreme Court, introduced her, Sotomayor stepped off the speaker’s platform and roamed the aisles around the students, answering questions eye-to-eye and engaging them in banter.
She frequently referred to her new memoir, “My Beloved World,” and urged the children to dream big and explore career possibilities, even if they seem intimidating.
“When I was your age, I didn’t know there was a Supreme Court,” she said. She said she learned about the legal system by watching “Perry Mason” television dramas.
She promised her young audience that if any of them became a justice, “I’ll come and swear you in.”
The new building was named for Ralph Carr, Colorado’s governor from 1939 to 1943, who spoke out for the constitutional rights of Japanese-Americans who were confined to internment camps during World War II.
The $258 million building houses courtrooms for the state Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals as well as offices of the attorney general, the state public defender and court administrators.
While praising the center, Sotomayor looked up from her notes and said with a smile, “The kids in this audience today won’t remember a time in their lives when this building didn’t exist.”
She is so right. It would be a tragic mistake to automatically assume that somewhat with an arab/muslim name or coming from an Islamic country is somehow more likely to be a terrorist than who looks and sounds like a “real American” (in the words of that legendary Am’Haoretz, Michelle Bachman and repeated by Alan West).
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I kind of got the opposite message from this post. What are the “other indicators” and the whole thing about a “fine line”? I believe she is saying, and quite reasonably I would add, that if there are indicators such as a person being a suspicious Moslem, then there are times we must balance our presumption of innocence against the reality that this person has a higher likelihood of being a jihadist than someone of another race. And that is obviously a fine line in our politically correct society.
However it is a safe track, and it is quite refreshing to know that the nations biggest law makers have our backs.
if this guy was on an fbi watch list as a radical muslim, that should be enough of a profile. she conveniently forgot that.
the fact is,that 99% of terrorist acts in the last 40 years have been committed by Muslims,therefore common sense should tell us, that in order to prevent the next terrorist act,we must, YES we must profile the most likely segment of the population that the next terrorist act will come from,political correctness will destroy our once great country,
proves once again how right Michael Savage was,when he coined the phrase “liberalism is a severe mental disease” and on top of it,it’s suicidal
CH.S