Does Sonia Sotomayor have a racial bias? The question informed much of the Republican line of query in her recent Senate hearings. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and his GOP colleagues on the Judiciary Committee pointed out Sotomayor's membership in a Puerto Rican activist group and her now-infamous speeches on diversity. (The phrase "wise Latina" was uttered no fewer than 27 times over the four days, by one blog's count.) Sotomayor's assent on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel that rejected Frank Ricci's discrimination suit -- which the Supreme Court later overturned -- created even more fodder for her skeptics.

What confounded Sotomayor's critics, despite her record of active involvement in identity politics and head-scratching comments, was her mainstream jurisprudence. Sotomayor is widely considered to be a liberal, but her record "has not been radical by any means," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., remarked. This seeming disconnect was the topic of a recent article in Newsweek. As Graham asked Sotomayor during the hearings, "Who are we getting here?"

Understanding Sotomayor's activism requires looking at the place where her lifelong passion for minority rights took root. "My days at Princeton... were the single most transforming experience I have had. It was here that I became truly aware of my Latina identity," Sotomayor said in a 1996 speech at her alma mater. Although Sotomayor had been one of the few minority students at Cardinal Spellman High School, a Catholic school in the Bronx, it was her experience as one of the first women and Latino students at Princeton that seemed to have galvanized her advocacy.

Princeton was one of the last Ivy League universities to accept women, and it was one of the last schools north of the Mason-Dixon to integrate -- and when it did, it was only on the behest of the federal government in the midst of World War II. When Sotomayor arrived at Old Nassau in the fall of 1972, her class was only the fourth to be coed, and men outnumbered women by more than three to one. Furthermore, the school had just begun admitting racial minorities above token numbers.

Princeton was an alienating place for racial minorities, according to Sotomayor and many of her classmates. Sotomayor recalled in 1996, "Although I had some experiences with discrimination in high school, it was limited, and I was protected by my family and friends in the close cocoon we had around us." The difference between Spellman and Princeton, said Sotomayor, was that "when I came to Princeton... that cocoon was gone."

The university was still predominantly white, and for many minority students, arriving at Princeton was a culture shock. The school lacked an institutional support system for minority students. The patrician eating clubs and faculty mentors that white students depended on, but were alien to minority students, further deepened their sense of otherness. Although they rarely experienced overt racism, many minority students say they felt unwelcome. "I remember seeing graffiti on some of the construction sites referring to the coeds as dogs," said Margarita Rosa, a fellow Puerto Rican classmate. Minority students were also aware of the angry alumni letters that flowed into campus. For Rosa, the antipathy "permeated" the campus. "I felt like I was expected to prove myself -- to prove that I had a right to be there," Rosa said.

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