Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voiced her strong disapproval of the Supreme Court’s majority viewpoint on affirmative action in university admissions, arguing in her dissent that it won’t accelerate the end of racial prejudice.
Jackson wrote in her dissent:
“The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us.”
“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”
Jackson recused herself from one of the two cases the court examined, the one involving Harvard, due to her previous position on the university’s governing board when she was a lower court judge. Her statement was solely focused on the case related to the University of North Carolina.
