Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/185

46, in which institutions reflect all sectors of the American public and where “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners [are] able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” is precisely what the Equal Protection Clause commands. Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” Speech (Aug. 28, 1963). It is “essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 332.

By singling out race, the Court imposes a special burden on racial minorities for whom race is a crucial component of their identity. Holistic admissions require “truly individualized consideration” of the whole person. Id., at 334. Yet, “by foreclosing racial considerations, colorblindness denies those who racially self-identify the full expression of their identity” and treats “racial identity as inferior” among all “other forms of social identity.” E. Boddie, The Indignities of Colorblindness, 64 UCLA L. Rev. Discourse, [sic] 64, 67 (2016). The Court’s approach thus turns the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee on its head and creates an equal protection problem of its own.

There is no question that minority students will bear the burden of today’s decision. Students of color testified at