I happened to have an assignment due for my journalism class, one that asked that we speak about a time when we had felt like an ‘outsider’ and how it had impacted us personally. Unlike a straight journalism piece, we were required to speak from a personal perspective.

Slip of the tongue or not, calling Sotomayor “Maria” may have a greater impact than Mike Huckabee may understand.

I think about the news of today as the sun sets and my house settles into quiet. Today, Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to fill the Supreme Court position vacated with Justice David Sutter’s retirement. I watched some of the news coverage about her nomination, and heard the challenges. “Liberal,” “Activist Judge,” “Sympathetic,” “Hefty,” “Not up to the intellectual challenge.”

Perhaps the most egregious statement came in a supposed slip of the tongue from Senator Mike Huckabee who called Judge Sotomayor, “Maria.” Any Latino knows what that meant – who knows if Huckabee did. Yet, it seems likely, given the connotation this code word will have with the most conservative, rabidly anti-immigrant base.

It’s a secret code language that most of the public can and will dismiss, but “Maria” will stay in the minds of Latinos when they go to work tomorrow wondering how it will be that their good work, hard efforts, and professional growth will ever be recognized when this genius of a legal mind can be reduced to a maid with the slip of one tongue.

When I learned that Sotomayor...