Wise Latina is the New Queer

During the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, many conservative and right-wing pundits tried to make a big to-do over the fact that Sotomayor said the following statement: "[A] wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."  Conservatives wanted to paint this statement as racist and offensive.  Pop culture instead has embraced the phrase "wise Latina," pushing the term into the lexicon of words, like queer, that have been reclaimed by minority groups as a means of empowerment.

Queer is a term that, for many, was an offensive slur that harkened back to the days of "Mad Men," when it was regularly used as a derogatory term to refer to LGBT folks.  Now?  For many, it's a cultural concept that means a rejection of labels for one's sexual orientation.  Or, as some folks have put it, queer was a term that was reclaimed by the LGBT community as a source of power.

Exit queer, enter Wise Latina.  The latter phrase was used by many a conservative politico as a means of trying to discredit Sonia Sotomayor.  Sen. John Cornyn, for instance, said that Sotomayor's reference to being a Wise Latina was "antithetical to the whole idea of the rule of law."  Rush Limbaugh called Sotomayor a "racist" for using the term Wise Latina.  Glenn Beck said that Sotomayor's comment was "one of the most outrageous racist remarks" he's heard.

So how are people reacting to conservatives trying to criminalize the phrase "Wise Latina"?  They're embracing the term as a badge of honor, and a proud descriptor.  Booyeah.

AP notes that "Wise Latina" has become a pop culture phenomenon.  And now it's being marketed on books, cups, T-shirts, and onesies, to name a few items.  Charles McIlwain, a media prof at NYU, told AP that people are seeing this phrase as an opportunity to take pride in their roots, and reclaim it as something worth aspiring toward.

"I think one thing many people are doing, Latinas and the Latino community in general, is reframing the phrase and saying: 'Hey, when we talk about the wise Latina, we're not trying to show that somehow we're better than others, but we want to associate being Latino with something that's wise and good," McIlwain told AP.

What a great example of owning a phrase that haters tried to tarnish.  Talk radio might want to demonize Wise Latina, along the same lines as words like queer were once demonized.  But these are words and terms that can be reclaimed, and can be used to educate and inspire, rather than label or disparage.