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26  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
JACKSON, J., dissenting 

The only way out of this morass—for all of us—is to stare 
at racial disparity unblinkingly, and then do what evidence 
and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and 
march forward together, collectively striving to achieve true 
equality  for  all  Americans.  It  is  no  small  irony  that  the
judgment the majority hands down today will forestall the
end  of  race-based  disparities  in  this  country,  making  the 
colorblind world the majority wistfully touts much more dif-
ficult to accomplish. 

* 

* 

* 

As the Civil War neared its conclusion, General William 
T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton convened 
a meeting of Black leaders in Savannah, Georgia.  During
the meeting, someone asked Garrison Frazier, the group’s 
spokesperson, what “freedom” meant to him.  He answered, 
“ ‘placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor,
and take care of ourselves . . . to have land, and turn it and 

—————— 
ment,” ante, at 51.  JUSTICE THOMAS’s opinion also demonstrates an ob-
session with race consciousness that far outstrips my or UNC’s holistic 
understanding that race can be a factor that affects applicants’ unique 
life experiences.  How else can one explain his detection of “an organizing 
principle based on race,” a claim that our society is “fundamentally rac-
ist,” and a desire for Black “victimhood” or racial “silo[s],” ante, at 49–52, 
in  this  dissent’s  approval  of  an  admissions  program  that  advances  all 
Americans’ shared pursuit of true equality by treating race “on par with” 
other aspects of identity, supra, at 18?  JUSTICE THOMAS ignites too many 
more straw men to list, or fully extinguish, here.  The takeaway is that 
those who demand that no one think about race (a classic pink-elephant 
paradox) refuse to see, much less solve for, the elephant in the room— 
the race-linked disparities that continue to impede achievement of our 
great Nation’s full potential.  Worse still, by insisting that obvious truths 
be ignored, they prevent our problem-solving institutions from directly 
addressing  the  real  import  and  impact  of  “social  racism”  and 
“government-imposed  racism,”  ante,  at  55  (THOMAS,  J.,  concurring), 
thereby deterring our collective progression toward becoming a society 
where race no longer matters.