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the majority “move[s] us from ‘separate but equal’ to ‘unequal but benign.’ ” Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 638 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting).

In addition to demonstrating that UT discriminates against Asian-American students, the classroom study also exhibits UT’s use of a few crude, overly simplistic racial and ethnic categories. Under the UT plan, both the favored and the disfavored groups are broad and consist of students from enormously diverse backgrounds. See Supp. App. 30a; see also Fisher I, 570 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (“five predefined racial categories”). Because “[c]rude measures of this sort threaten to reduce [stu­ dents] to racial chits,” Parents Involved, 551 U. S., at 798 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.), UT’s reliance on such measures further undermines any claim based on classroom diversity statistics, see id., at 723 (majority opinion) (criticizing school policies that viewed race in rough “white/nonwhite” or “black/‘other’ ” terms); id., at 786 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.) (faulting government for relying on “crude racial categories”); Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 633, n. 1 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting) (concluding that “ ‘the very attempt to define with precision a beneficiary’s qualifying racial characteristics is repugnant to our constitutional ideals,’ ” and noting that if the government “ ‘is to make a serious effort to define racial classes by criteria that can be administered objectively, it must study precedents such as the First Regulation to the Reichs Citizenship Law of November 14, 1935’ ”).

For example, students labeled “Asian American,” Supp. App. 26a, seemingly include “individuals of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Indian and other backgrounds comprising roughly 60% of the world’s population,” Brief for Asian American Legal Foundation et al. as Amici Curiae, O. T. 2012, No. 11–345,