Since when does racial preference equal empathy?

"You would need a heart of stone not to be inspired by Sotomayor's story. But does her superior knowledge of "ordinary" people arise from being Hispanic? Sotomayor thinks so, if we believe the snippet from a 2001 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, law school that rippled across the Internet this week. She believes judges cannot help being affected by gender and ethnic identity. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences," she said, "would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." This doesn't make Sotomayor a bad person or a racist, even if Rush Limbaugh has called her one. But it is not what most Americans would define as empathy."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1901478,00.html