Sonia Sotomayor has been subjected to the intense congressional scrutiny that has become the norm for every nominee to the Supreme Court. She is the first Latina (and third woman) nominated to the nation’s highest court. Much of the questioning from the Senate judiciary committee concerned how her heritage and related views might influence her decisions. Isabel Molina-Guzmán is a professor in the department of media and cinema studies at the University of Illinois, the author of an upcoming book titled “Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media,” and soon-to-be director of the university’s Latina/Latino Studies Program. Molina-Guzmán was interviewed by News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
From the perspective of your research, and as a Latina, what struck you first and most broadly about the Senate hearings and the way they were covered?
The Senate and media focus on the “wise Latina” remark (the nominee made in a 2001 speech) characterizes Sotomayor as emotional, unpredictable and racially biased. This is both interesting and unique to U.S. media treatment of ethnic and racial minorities. It taps into public concerns about the status of ethnic and racial minorities at a time of dramatic demographic transformation. Questions that focus on her Latina background reinforce public perception that she is different from them. Familiar stereotypes about ethnic and racial minorities as unable to be professional, objective and neutral then come into play in discussions about Sotomayor. Interestingly, recent Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, an Italian American who referenced his own family’s experience with discrimination at his Senate hearing, and how it guided him, was not subjected to questions or news coverage about an ethnic bias or unbalanced emotional temperament.
Like Sotomayor, your heritage is Puerto Rican, and your sense is that most senators and reporters had had little experience with people with this background. How did that show in the questions and coverage, and did it matter?
From my experience, it is clear that many people do not understand Puerto Rico’s history or relationship with the U.S., or know, for instance, that Puerto Ricans are born as U.S. citizens. News editorials and Senate questions suspicious of Sotomayor’s involvement with the then-named Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization much like the NAACP, illustrate an ongoing unease and lack of familiarity with Puerto Rican issues.
Immigration, especially from Mexico, has been a hot-button issue. How do you think that issue affected the coverage of Sotomayor, both before and during the hearings?
As research by the Pew Hispanic Center and Gallup Poll illustrates, anti-Latino immigration sentiment has been strong throughout the past decade. Research by the Hispanic Association of Journalists also shows that television news has spent much time on negative coverage of Latino immigration, especially since 9/11. Although Sotomayor is not Mexican and not an immigrant, news coverage and reception of the Latina nominee has been negatively affected by the ongoing anti-Latino and anti-immigration conversation. The tendency is to lump all Latinos together by ignoring key differences between them. Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Mexicans, the big three Latino groups in the U.S., who have very different claims to citizenship, are all similarly implicated in the backlash toward Latino immigration. The negative lumping of Latinos is most prevalent on television news talk shows such as FOX’s “The O’Reilly Factor” or CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”
Your upcoming book examines cases ranging from the news coverage of the Elián González custody dispute, to the tabloid coverage of Latina actress Jennifer Lopez, to the films “Maid in Manhattan” and “Spanglish,” both about Latina domestic workers. How have those and other forms of media portrayed, and even stereotyped, Latinas? And how might those portrayals have influenced the treatment of Sotomayor?
My research shows that Latinas across news and entertainment tend to be pigeonholed along two stereotypes – the “good girl” Latina señorita and the hotheaded Latina spitfire. Congressional and journalistic characterizations of Sotomayor as (having presided over) a “hot bench,” aggressive, and temperamental situate Sotamayor within the spitfire stereotype, a potentially negative characterization that contributes to the view that the first Latina Supreme Court nominee will not be objective or judicially neutral, that her emotions will hold sway over her rational mind.
Latina actresses such as Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek have gotten a lot of roles and attention over the past decade, even if not all positive. What explains their popularity with movie producers and the public?
Latina actresses and public figures are interesting to the media and media audiences because they are the ideal multiracial representatives of a multicultural nation. They are ethnic and yet exist outside the dominant U.S. black-white racial conversation. Instead, they are an indefinable brown that is safe, marketable, and increasingly familiar to a nation where ethnic and racial minorities are the fastest growing demographic categories. So Latinas are ideal in the sense that many audiences, in both the U.S. and worldwide, regardless of their own ethnic or racial background, can still see themselves reflected in their successes and failures. The danger for Latinas as a multicultural ideal, of course, is that it erases blackness, whiteness, and the diversity of U.S. ethnic groups into one umbrella category.
