Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/235

Rh till it by our own labor.’ ”

Today’s gaps exist because that freedom was denied far longer than it was ever afforded. Therefore, as correctly and amply explains, UNC’s holistic review program pursues a righteous end—legitimate “ ‘because it is defined by the Constitution itself. The end is the maintenance of freedom.’ ” Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443–444 (1968) (quoting Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1118 (1866) (Rep. Wilson)).

Viewed from this perspective, beleaguered admissions programs such as UNC’s are not pursuing a patently unfair, ends-justified ideal of a multiracial democracy at all. Instead, they are engaged in an earnest effort to secure a more functional one. The admissions rubrics they have constructed now recognize that an individual’s “merit”—his ability to succeed in an institute of higher learning and ultimately contribute something to our society—cannot be fully determined without understanding that individual in full. There are no special favorites here.

UNC has thus built a review process that more accurately assesses merit than most of the admissions programs that have existed since this country’s founding. Moreover, in so doing, universities like UNC create pathways to upward mobility for long excluded and historically disempowered racial groups. Our Nation’s history more than justifies this course of action. And our present reality indisputably establishes that such programs are still needed—for the general public good—because after centuries of state-sanctioned (and enacted) race discrimination, the aforementioned intergenerational race-based gaps in health, wealth, and well-being stubbornly persist.

Rather than leaving well enough alone, today, the majority is having none of it. Turning back the clock (to a time before the legal arguments and evidence establishing the