Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 211.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

3 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

I 
A 

Imagine  two  college  applicants  from  North  Carolina, 
John and James.  Both trace their family’s North Carolina 
roots to the year of UNC’s founding in 1789.  Both love their 
State  and  want  great  things  for  its  people.    Both  want  to 
honor their family’s legacy by attending the State’s flagship
educational institution.  John, however, would be the sev-
enth  generation  to  graduate  from  UNC.  He  is  White. 
James would be the first; he is Black.  Does the race of these 
applicants  properly  play  a  role  in  UNC’s  holistic  merits-
based admissions process?

To answer that question, “a page of history is worth a vol-
ume of logic.”  New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U. S. 345, 
349 (1921).  Many chapters of America’s history appear nec-
essary, given the opinions that my colleagues in the major-
ity have issued in this case. 

Justice Thurgood Marshall recounted the genesis: 

“Three  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  the  Negro  was
dragged to this country in chains to be sold into slavery.
Uprooted from his homeland and thrust into bondage
for  forced  labor,  the  slave  was  deprived  of  all  legal 
rights.  It was unlawful to teach him to read; he could 
be sold away from his family and friends at the whim 
of  his  master;  and  killing  or  maiming  him  was  not  a 
crime.  The system of slavery brutalized and dehuman-
ized both master and slave.”  Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. 
Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 387–388 (1978). 

Slavery  should  have  been  (and  was  to  many)  self-
evidently  dissonant  with  our  avowed  founding  principles.
When  the  time  came  to  resolve  that  dissonance,  eleven 
States chose slavery.  With the Union’s survival at stake, 
Frederick  Douglass  noted,  Black  Americans  in  the  South
“were almost the only reliable friends the nation had,” and 
“but for their help . . . the Rebels might have succeeded in