E-mail a friendCesar Perales
airdate June 1, 2009
Cesar Perales is president-general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund)—an organization he co-founded in '72, shortly after graduating from law school, and on whose board Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor served for 12 years. Perales also has a record of public service, with posts that include HHS assistant secretary under President Carter and Social Services department commissioner and deputy mayor of his native New York City.
President of LatinoJustice PRLDEF offers his take on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's questionable comment. (3:05)
Full interview. (9:10)
Cesar Perales
Tavis: Tonight, though, we begin our conversation about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Cesar Perales is the president and general counsel of LatinoJustice, formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. He previously served as assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under President Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Perales joins us tonight from New York. Nice to have you on the program, Mr. Perales.
Cesar Perales: It's my pleasure to be here.
Tavis: Let me start by going right at it - the talk about Judge Sotomayor over the last few days has been around the issue of race, and let me just ask you in a forthright and direct way, since you served with her on the board of this organization for 12 years, is she a racist?
Perales: That's silly. The fact is that she served on the board of the civil rights organization, she believes in justice for all, in essence. There is nothing more American, more apple pie than the things that Sonia Sotomayor stands for and has stood for all of her life.
Tavis: What do you make, then, of this language that she is not just a racist but, as the term goes, a "reverse racist?"
Perales: It is silly. The reality is that they point to such things as the fact that as a student at Princeton she was active in a group that sought to open the doors of Princeton to more minorities and more Latinos. But no one said anything when a few years earlier a sitting justice was part of a group that sought to close the doors to women at Princeton.
First of all, it is just so silly when a woman who has served in the judiciary for so many years, as she has, as the president pointed out, more judicial experience than any other sitting member of the Supreme Court, you've got a record to examine, and it's a record that is sterling.
She has been recognized as one of the top judges in this country. To now begin to call her a racist I think says something about the people who are attacking her than it does about her.
Tavis: And what does it say about them?
Perales: Well, I think that they're making a mistake by choosing her to attack, to build up and arouse the right wing base in this country. I say it's a mistake because while I understand why they're doing it, I think Latino people throughout this nation are offended - are offended that this woman, the jewel from their community, is being treated in this fashion. And I suspect that in the end it will not inure to the interest of the right wing in this country.
Tavis: How is she, though, as she starts these meetings on the Hill tomorrow, this week, meeting with senators, trying to line up support, the White House ushering her around. The president has tried to explain this comment that she made some years ago, and I'm paraphrasing here, a Latina would be in a better position than a White male to assess certain situations. That's just a generalization here.
But the president has tried to explain that away by saying, essentially, that if she had to say it over again she might restate that sentiment differently. What's your sense, knowing her as well as you do, of how she's going to explain this statement in the coming days to senators and to the nation?
Perales: Well, she is a person of great intelligence. She will explain it. The reality is she'll explain the context in which she spoke about the strength of her background, the fact that you want on this court people who come from different backgrounds so that they can bring something new to the table, so that it's not just a group of justices who all came from the same middle class backgrounds.
I think she'll explain what that means, and I think something else - I think when the senators meet her they will be charmed by her, they will understand how intelligent she is. It comes across. And I'm looking forward to the confirmation hearings when the entire nation will get a chance to meet Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
She is incredible, she is impressive, and I think as a result of these confirmation hearings everyone will love her.
Tavis: So you don't buy the Newt Gingrich line, the Rush Limbaugh line that the statement that she made some years ago that we referenced a moment ago disqualifies her?
Perales: No, it does not disqualify her at all. You've got people who have been searching her record - an old record, a long record - and all they can find is that in a speech in a comment she made, she referenced the strengths that she thought a Latina woman would bring to the bench in contrast with that of White males.
She may not have used the perfect set of words to communicate that, and I think if you look at the entire record of what she said you'll understand what she was trying to say, and I think she'll be able to explain that.
Tavis: There are those - I did a lot of reading over the weekend and I saw article after article after article that in some ways I think was chiding President Obama. When he was running, he wanted to dash and do away with what we call the politics of racial identity, and now that he is in office they are accusing him, these critics, at least, accusing him on his first Supreme Court pick of going back down the road in this quote-unquote "post-racial America" of playing identity politics again. What do you make of that argument?
Perales: I don't buy it. The reality is that Sonia Sotomayor is perhaps the best qualified person to sit in the nation's highest court. The fact that she is a Latina is not the reason she was chosen. She's an extraordinary record. Look at her academic record.
She was summa cum laude at Princeton; she was on the Yale law journal; she was an editor on that law journal. She was one of the youngest judges ever selected to sit on the federal bench. This is a woman with incredible credentials. The fact that she is a minority and was involved in Latino groups and organizations does not make her a racist, and it should not be an indication that somehow we're now involved in identity politics again. The only people who are talking about her as being particularly identified with the Latino community are her critics. No one else is. None of the people who came before her as attorneys are raising that issue.
So I think it's clearly a political effort on the part of the right wing to attack President Obama. They think they have found something. I'm afraid there's nothing there.
Tavis: What do you make of the fact that while she's being elevated now, at least nominated to be elevated, to the Supreme Court by a Democrat, President Barack Obama, she was elevated to that federal position by a Republican president, the first President Bush?
Perales: Well, I think it speaks to the fact that the first President Bush did not see her as someone who he objected to and was not - he saw her as a qualified woman, ready to serve on the federal bench. She was nominated by a Democratic senator in New York, as is the custom in New York that senators alternate, and she was found to be acceptable. In fact, many Republican senators supported her and voted in her favor.
Tavis: As anti-political as we attempt to be around the selection, the appointment of a Supreme Court nominee, there are politics swirling all around this thing. What are the politics that the Republican Party, to your earlier point, have to look out for in going too far, as it were, in attacking a Latina?
Perales: Well, as I indicated, I think that the Latino community, perhaps new to the politics of this nation, only sees a woman who is so thoroughly well-qualified - as I indicated, a jewel in our community. And they're seeing her being tarnished. They don't understand the politics of it.
What they see is people attacking her because she is a Latina. They don't understand why someone with those qualifications would be attacked, so the only assumption that can be made is she's being targeted because she is a Latina.
And so I think that that is a very, very important part of the politics that's going on here, and at the same time certainly the right of the Republican party at this point wants to enliven their base and so they want to make her evil. They are turning virtue into vice and they're going to be focusing on her, I think, to their detriment.
Tavis: In the end, though, is it your assessment that the president has the votes and that she will ultimately be confirmed by the U.S. Senate?
Perales: Yes, and I think once the confirmation hearings take place she will have even more votes. I'm very, very confident of that.
Tavis: Cesar Perales, nice to have you on the program. Thanks for your insight. Take care of yourself.
Perales: Thanks to be here.
Tavis: Appreciate you.
Back to June 1, 2009