NATIONAL REVIEW: A Revealing Supreme Court Dialogue on Race between Justices Jackson and Thomas

Last week, the Supreme Court decided Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, vindicating the promise of equal protection by ending race-based admissions in higher education. The majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts declared that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry” are “by their very nature odious to a free people.” Commentators have focused on a striking exchange between Justice Thomas in his concurrence and Justice Jackson in her dissent. Perhaps the most revealing feature of Justice Jackson’s response to Justice Thomas is the extent to which it mirrors the common responses offered by the cultural elites whenever their faddish critical-race-theory view of America is criticized. Though this theory hides under many names (“CRT is just a law school class!”), its basic premise is that historical injustices and alleged present disparities justify ongoing discrimination based on race. Even as Justice Jackson built her dissent around this race-centric view, she — like school districts and educational elites around the country — simultaneously denied pressing the theory, pretended the theory was purely factual, and lobbed accusations that the person advocating equal treatment was actually race-obsessed.