This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at

Patreon.com slash the Dig and by University of California Press which has loads of great titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is Being Brown, Sonia Sotomayor,, and the Latino question by Lazaro Lima.

Being Brown tells the story of the country's first Latina Supreme Court justices rise to the

pinnacle of American public life

at a moment of profound demographic and political transformation.

While Sotomayor's confirmation

appeared to signal the greater acceptance and inclusion of Latinos.

The uncritical embrace of her status as a possibility model and icon paradoxically erased the fact that her success was due to civil rights

policies and safeguards that no longer existed. Being Brown analyzes Sotomayor's story of success and accomplishment, despite seemingly insurmountable

odds in order to ask, what do we lose in political practice when we allow symbolic

inclusion to supplant the work of meaningful political enfranchisement in a

historical moment of resurgent racism and unrelenting Latino bashing,

being Brown explains what we stand to lose when we allow democratic values to be trampled for the sake of political expediency.

It provides the historical vocabulary for understanding why the Latino body politic is central to the country's future and why

Sonia Sotomayor's biography provides an important window into understanding America at this historical juncture.

Being Brown, Sonia Soto-Mayer and the Latino question, by Lazaro Lima,

out now from University of California Press.

Welcome to the Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and

I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

I was going to take this week off, but with events moving so fast in Bolivia since the coup,

I wanted to get this interview with scholar Jeff Weber, Dunn, and posted fast.

...