WASHINGTON (AP) - There are two sides to U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: a Latina from a blue-collar family and a wealthy member of America's power elite.

The White House portrays Sotomayor as a living image of the American dream, though its telling of the rags-to-riches story emphasizes the rags, a more politically appealing narrative, and plays down the riches.

Branding a complex person in a simplistic way can backfire in the highly charged environment surrounding her coming Senate hearing.

Discussions about Sotomayor and her ethnicity, gender and tax bracket carry risks for supporters and detractors. Unartful criticism by Republicans risks offending voters they'd like to win. Democrats, likewise, need to be cautious about how they conduct the debate in a nation uncomfortable talking about matters of race and gender.

On ethnicity, Sotomayor herself has recognized - and contributed to - the dichotomy. She proudly highlights her Puerto Rican roots but hasn't always liked it when others have. She once took issue with a prospective employer who singled her out as a Latina with questions she viewed as offensive yet has shown a keen ethnic consciousness herself.

In a California speech in 2001 now under renewed scrutiny, she remarked that, on a court, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” On Friday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sotomayor acknowledges she made a poor word choice.

In that same speech, “A Latina Judge's Voice,” Sotomayor drew attention to cultural differences between Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans and between Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico and those born on the U.S. mainland, and narrowed her ethnicity beyond American, Hispanic and Puerto Rican to “Newyorkrican.”

“For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War II,” she explained.

Yet years ago, during a recruiting dinner in law school at Yale University, Sotomayor objected when a law firm partner asked whether she would have been admitted to the school if she weren't Puerto Rican, and whether law firms did a disservice by hiring minority students the firms know are unqualified and will ultimately be fired.

Afterward, Sotomayor confronted the partner about the questions, rejected his insistence that he meant no harm and turned down his invitation for further job interviews. She filed a discrimination complaint against the firm with the university, which could have barred the firm from recruiting on campus. She won a formal apology from the firm.

In speeches, Sotomayor has harkened back to her and her brother's beginnings in a poor New York City neighborhood, roots that President Barack Obama highlighted in introducing her this week.

“Born in the South Bronx, she was raised in a housing project,” Obama said. “And even as she has accomplished so much in her life, she has never forgotten where she began, never lost touch with the community that supported her.”

Yet Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx - she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton University and then Yale.

And Sotomayor's life and lifestyle after law school largely resemble the background of many lawyers who rise to powerful positions in Washington.

She climbed her way up through New York's Democratic power structure boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years - Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. That is the access of a partner in a corporate law firm, not a child from the South Bronx.

She now earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in New York.

Republicans are scrutinizing her full record and background, but carefully. The White House warned as much earlier this week.

“It is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation,” Gibbs, the White House spokesman said.

With Hispanics a growing voting bloc, and ethnic sensitivities high, few are willing to be as blunt as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said of her comment that a Latina woman would rule more wisely than a white man: “New racism is no better than old racism.”