The media are crowing about President Obama selecting the "first Hispanic Supreme Court justice".  I have news for the media.

We have already had an Hispanic U. S. Supreme Court Justice!

He was Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, U. S. Supreme Court Justice from 1932 -1938; a Sephardic Jew of Spanish ancestry.

Cardozo was the second Jew, after Louis Brandeis, to be appointed to the Supreme Court.  Some liberal experts dispute the notion that he qualifies as the first Hispanic justice.

Here are the facts. You decide .

His father, Judge Albert Cardozo, was Vice-President and Trustee of Congregation Shearith Israel, the historical Spanish-Portuguese synagogue in New York City, .  Young Benjamin was born in New York, was bar mitzvah in that synagogue and, as an adult, was proud of both his Jewish and Hispanic heritage.

Congregation Shearith Israel is the oldest congregation in the Western Hemisphere, having been founded in Recife, Brazil ca. 1630 and moved to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1654.  Its present location is at 70th St. and Central Park West. 

Most American Jews are of Ashkenazic origin, and know little of this critically important component of the Jewish people.  

Jews were a major component of the populations of Spain and Portugal for 800 years (~700 ̶ 1500 CE).

Ladino, the "Sephardic Yiddish" based on pre-1500 Spanish, is still spoken by 200,000 Jewish descendants around the world, mainly in Mediterranean regions.

45 of the 50 most common Hispanic family names are of Jewish origin.

All Hispanic given names ending in "el" are Hebrew phrases with reference to G-d.  Like Gabriel, Emanuel, Rafael, etc. Many Spanish words and names of places are of Hebrew origin.

A recent analysis of the DNA of a statistical sample of men of Spain found that 20% have the Jewish genetic haplogroup, viz. they descend from Jews. The only way that this is possible is that there was already massive assimilation of the Jews of Spain in the centuries leading up to the Inquisition.

There are organized groups of b'nai anusim ---- descendants of Jewish victims of Inquisitions in Spain, Portugal and Latin America who were forced to convert, or who hid and/or abandoned their Jewishness out of fear of persecution --- who are clamoring for acceptance as Jewish returnees. It is estimated that a significant fraction of the Hispanics of the Southwestern USA and Northern Mexico are of Jewish ancestry and don't know it.

But the media would not think of, nor recognize, Benjamin Cardozo as an "Hispanic".  They want a "genuine" Hispanic  ̶  certainly not one who was also a Jew.