„With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,“ Jackson wrote in a 29-page dissent.
In a scorching, 29-page dissent, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sharply criticized her conservative colleagues’ decision Thursday to reject affirmative action in college admissions decisions, overturning more than four decades of precedent.
Jackson opened her dissent by noting the “gulf-sized race-based gaps” that continue to exist in American society — ones created “in the distant past” but passed down through generations. By restricting the use of race in admissions decisions, she said, the Supreme Court was detaching itself from the country’s actual past and present experiences.
She compared the majority members of the court to ostriches sticking their necks in the sand, a reference to a common myth about what the long-necked birds do when scared.
“No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better,” Jackson wrote. “The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrichlike) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.”
Colleges being required to ignore race, she added, would not make the issue go away — and would in fact make race matter even more and prolong the problem of racism.
“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 difficult to accomplish,” Jackson wrote.
