Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 98.0

50  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
THOMAS, J., concurring 

With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the peo-
ple of our Nation proclaimed that the law may not sort citi-
zens based on race.  It is this principle that the Framers of 
the  Fourteenth  Amendment  adopted  in  the  wake  of  the 
Civil War to fulfill the promise of equality under the law. 
And  it  is  this  principle  that  has  guaranteed  a  Nation  of 
equal  citizens  the  privileges  or  immunities  of  citizenship 
and the equal protection of the laws.  To now dismiss it as 
“two-dimensional  flatness,”  post,  at  25  (JACKSON,  J.,  dis-
senting),  is  to  abdicate  a  sacred  trust  to  ensure  that  our 
“honored dead . . . shall not have died in vain.”  A. Lincoln, 
Gettysburg Address (1863). 
  Yet, JUSTICE JACKSON  would replace the second Found-
ers’ vision with an organizing principle based on race.  In 
fact, on her view, almost all of life’s outcomes may be un-
hesitatingly ascribed to race.  Post, at 24–26.  This is so, she 
writes, because of statistical disparities among different ra-
cial groups. See post, at 11–14.  Even if some whites have a 
lower household net worth than some blacks, what matters 
to  JUSTICE  JACKSON  is  that  the  average  white  household 
has more wealth than the average black household.  Post, 
at 11. 

This lore is not and has never been true.  Even in the seg-
regated  South  where  I  grew  up,  individuals  were  not  the 
sum of their skin color.  Then as now, not all disparities are
based on race; not all people are racist; and not all differ-
ences  between  individuals  are  ascribable  to  race.    Put 
simply, “the fate of abstract categories of wealth statistics 
is not the same as the fate of a given set of flesh-and-blood 
human beings.”  T. Sowell, Wealth, Poverty and Politics 333 
(2016).  Worse still, JUSTICE JACKSON uses her broad obser-
vations about statistical relationships between race and se-
lect measures of health, wealth, and well-being to label all 
blacks as victims.  Her desire to do so is unfathomable to 
me.  I  cannot  deny  the  great  accomplishments  of  black 
Americans,  including  those  who  succeeded  despite  long