Jackson, J., dissenting
I
A
Imagine two college applicants from North Carolina, John and James. Both trace their family’s North Carolina roots to the year of UNC’s founding in 1789. Both love their State and want great things for its people. Both want to honor their family’s legacy by attending the State’s flagship educational institution. John, however, would be the seventh generation to graduate from UNC. He is White. James would be the first; he is Black. Does the race of these applicants properly play a role in UNC’s holistic merits-based admissions process?
To answer that question, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U. S. 345, 349 (1921). Many chapters of America’s history appear necessary, given the opinions that my colleagues in the majority have issued in this case.
Justice Thurgood Marshall recounted the genesis:
“Three hundred and fifty years ago, the Negro was dragged to this country in chains to be sold into slavery. Uprooted from his homeland and thrust into bondage for forced labor, the slave was deprived of all legal rights. It was unlawful to teach him to read; he could be sold away from his family and friends at the whim of his master; and killing or maiming him was not a crime. The system of slavery brutalized and dehumanized both master and slave.” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 387–388 (1978).
Slavery should have been (and was to many) self-evidently dissonant with our avowed founding principles. When the time came to resolve that dissonance, eleven States chose slavery. With the Union’s survival at stake, Frederick Douglass noted, Black Americans in the South “were almost the only reliable friends the nation had,” and “but for their help … the Rebels might have succeeded in
