Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/87

Rh taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories.” Parents Involved, 551 U. S., at 780–781 (, concurring). We cannot now blink reality to pretend, as the dissents urge, that affirmative action should be legally permissible merely because the experts assure us that it is “good” for black students. Though I do not doubt the sincerity of my dissenting colleagues’ beliefs, experts and elites have been wrong before—and they may prove to be wrong again. In part for this reason, the Fourteenth Amendment outlaws government-sanctioned racial discrimination of all types. The stakes are simply too high to gamble. Then, as now, the views that motivated Dred Scott and Plessy have not been confined to the past, and we must remain ever vigilant against all forms of racial discrimination.

Even taking the desire to help on its face, what initially seems like aid may in reality be a burden, including for the very people it seeks to assist. Take, for example, the college admissions policies here. “Affirmative action” policies do nothing to increase the overall number of blacks and Hispanics able to access a college education. Rather, those racial policies simply redistribute individuals among institutions of higher learning, placing some into more competitive institutions than they otherwise would have attended. See