Celebrate Justice!
“I do believe there are gender and ethnic stereotypes that propel people to assumptions about what they expected me to be,” these words from Sonia Sotomayor, our newest Supreme Court Justice, encapsulate the reasons for Chrysalis After-School. Girls need to overcome those assumptions and women need to challenge them!
So many articles have been written about how she has overcome her origins. But I wonder if those origins have actually helped her become the person she is.Certainly the injections required to survive juvenile diabetes taught her discipline. Her childhood in a Bronx home raised by her widowed Latina mother, taught her independence and gave her strength.
The Perry Mason television show inspired her to become a judge; she realized the judge was the most important person in the courtroom. That’s what she wanted to be. Patience and determination to survive law school, the prosecutor’s office and the federal approval process are certainly traits that any woman must learn to break the invisible barriers to achievement that still exist.