Now I’m a big John Stewart fan. Really I am. But I’m not sure I agree with his take on the Sonya Sotomayor confirmation as played out in his schtick last night (www.thedailyshow.com, 8/6/09).  He indicates that the fact that she is an intelligent, well qualified judge should say it all. Senators, and presumably others, shouldn’t be praising the fact that we have our first Hispanic Supreme Court Judge or our third woman. Shouldn’t we mention that? Shouldn’t we talk about it? Isn’t it still important, noteworthy even, that a Hispanic woman is on the high court? Perhaps if we were really in a post-racial society we wouldn’t even think about it or need to have this conversation. But we do think about it. And, if we don’t talk about it we perpetuate the racism in our institutions that makes it so that in 2009 we are just now finally having our first Hispanic person and only our second woman seated on the Supreme Court. In trying to be blind to race, don’t we perpetuate racism by allowing people and institutions who discriminate to carry on their practice? The rest of the schtick was pretty funny, though.