A picture of Obama with Judge Sotomayor is a potrait of the new America. It shows the fall of the historic racial barriers in which latinos are something a wild card due to their lack of a unified racial identity and propensity towards mixing. Despite the fact that they could be a bridge, they are looked on with fear.

The picture was splashed across the national media last Tuesday, and it will cease to be news when we accept once and for all that this is the new face of the nation, a country of immigrants, ethnicities, races, colors...

Last Tuesday we learned of the nomitation of the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court of the United States, who is also a woman, the third in the court’s history.

Oppositions to nominations to these positions are normal, especially when we’re talking about a court that was created to keep the Legislative and Executive branches in check.

The trouble is that the Latino community gets suspicious when reactions turn anti-inmigrant, anti-Latino, anti-racial, anti-new-American...

Nevertheless, those that argue against the integrity of Sotomayor’s record run the risk of alienating latino voters, who proved themselves to be an important part of the new electoral map of the United States in last year’s elections.

This power is so tangible that it seems that with the nomination of a Latina to such a high ranking and lifelong post, Obama is beginning to pay back the votes of this minority that helped him to become the first African American to assume the presidency of the United States.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s also a play to attract more Latino voters to the Democratic Party.

The real power players know that inclusion is the key, and that it’s not a fad but simply obedience to our own demographic and electoral reality caused by the unstoppable global flow of immigrants that is changing the face and color of so many countries.

Going back in time, Latin Americans were born from an amalgamation of Indians and Spaniards, which perhaps made them less fearful of mixing, a phenomenon that is demonized in the United States when in reality it’s a natural occurrence.

The new American is Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina who is Boricua, persistent, capable, hard working, humble, and most important of all, very similar to the old American.