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52  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
THOMAS, J., concurring 

nocent and helpless.  It is instead a call to empower privi-
leged elites, who will “tell us [what] is required to level the 
playing  field”  among  castes  and  classifications  that  they 
alone  can  divine.  Post,  at  26;  see  also  post,  at  5–7 
(GORSUCH, J., concurring) (explaining the arbitrariness of 
these classifications).  Then, after siloing us all into racial 
castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dis-
sent somehow believes that we will be able—at some unde-
fined point—to “march forward together” into some utopian
vision.  Post, at 26 (opinion of JACKSON, J.).  Social move-
ments that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, historically, 
have ended disastrously.

Unsurprisingly,  this  tried-and-failed  system  defies  both 
law and reason.  Start with the obvious: If social reorgani-
zation in the name of equality may be justified by the mere
fact of statistical disparities among racial groups, then that
reorganization  must  continue  until  these  disparities  are 
fully eliminated, regardless of the reasons for the dispari-
ties and the cost of their elimination.  If blacks fail a test at 
higher  rates  than  their  white  counterparts  (regardless  of 
whether the reason for the disparity has anything at all to
do  with  race),  the  only  solution  will  be  race-focused 
measures.  If those measures were to result in blacks failing 
at  yet  higher  rates,  the  only  solution  would  be  to  double 
down.  In  fact,  there  would  seem  to  be  no  logical  limit  to 
what  the  government  may  do  to  level  the  racial  playing
field—outright wealth transfers, quota systems, and racial 
preferences would all seem permissible.  In such a system, 
it would not matter how many innocents suffer race-based
injuries;  all  that  would  matter  is  reaching  the  race-based
goal.

Worse,  the  classifications  that  JUSTICE  JACKSON  draws 
are themselves race-based stereotypes.  She focuses on two 
hypothetical applicants, John and James, competing for ad-
mission to UNC.  John is a white, seventh-generation leg-
acy  at  the  school,  while  James  is  black  and  would  be  the