Table of Contents
Introduction: The Flaw in the ‘Colorblind’ Scale
For much of my early career as a legal historian, my intellectual compass was oriented toward a single, powerful ideal: the principle of “colorblind” justice.
This concept, elegantly symbolized by the perfectly balanced scales held by Lady Justice, represented the pinnacle of American jurisprudence.
It posited that the law, in its purest form, should be utterly impartial, weighing only the facts and merits of a case without regard to the race, gender, or background of the individuals involved.
This was my foundational assumption, the bedrock upon which I built my understanding of the American legal system.
It was a belief in a system designed to be fair, even if its human agents sometimes fell short.
The core struggle that gave rise to this report, and fundamentally reshaped my entire professional worldview, was the slow, brutal collision of that pristine ideal with the overwhelming weight of the historical record.
As I delved deeper into the archives of American law—into statutes, court rulings, and legal codes stretching back centuries—I was forced to confront an uncomfortable and undeniable truth.
For most of this nation’s history, the law was anything but blind.
It was, in fact, the primary and most powerful instrument for creating, codifying, and maintaining a brutally unequal racial and social hierarchy.
The scales of justice had not been merely tipped by accident or prejudice; they had been deliberately, meticulously, and legally rigged.
This realization led to a profound epiphany, a complete reframing of the very concept of equality.
The most potent articulation of this new understanding came not from a legal text, but from a speech by President Lyndon B.
Johnson, who captured the essence of the problem with a simple yet devastating analogy.
“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him,” Johnson argued, “bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair”.1
This image of the unequal racetrack became the central metaphor for my new understanding.2
It revealed that the problem of American inequality could not be solved by simply declaring the race “fair” from that moment forward.
True fairness required acknowledging that the competitors were beginning from vastly different starting points, burdened by the accumulated weight of history.
This report is the story of that discovery.
It is an exploration of the profound, systemic, and legally enforced inequality that made a policy like affirmative action—a policy that explicitly considers race and gender—not just a radical idea, but a perceived logical and moral necessity.
It is the story of why the architects of modern civil rights law concluded that to achieve true equality, they first had to stop pretending it already existed.
Part I: An Unequal Start: The Landscape of Pre-1964 America
To understand why a policy as controversial as affirmative action was conceived, one must first step back in time and survey the American landscape as it existed before the mid-1960s.
This was not a world of isolated or occasional prejudice.
It was a society structured by a comprehensive, legally enforced system of racial and gender subordination.
The inequality was not a flaw in the system; it was the system’s primary feature.
Examining this period reveals that the “unequal start” on the racetrack was not a metaphor but a daily, lived reality for millions of Americans, sanctioned by the highest courts and woven into the fabric of civil, educational, and economic life.
The Architecture of Segregation: A System of Total Control
The legal scaffolding for this system of total control was erected by the United States Supreme Court itself.
In its infamous 1896 ruling in Plessy v.
Ferguson, the Court enshrined the doctrine of “separate but equal” into constitutional law.3
This decision gave federal sanction to state-level racial segregation, providing the legal cover for what would become nearly a century of American apartheid.6
These state and local statutes, collectively known as Jim Crow laws, were breathtaking in their scope, designed to govern every conceivable aspect of human interaction.7
They mandated the strict separation of races in schools, parks, libraries, restaurants, theaters, public transportation, and even cemeteries.3
The ubiquitous “Whites Only” and “Colored” signs served as constant, humiliating reminders of an enforced racial order, a visual representation of second-class citizenship.8
The control was absolute.
In some municipalities, like Palm Beach, Florida, in 1939, laws even prohibited Black people from being on the streets after dark unless required by their employment.6
This system, however, was designed to do far more than just separate people.
Its ultimate purpose was to strip African Americans of political power and social standing, ensuring the permanence of the racial hierarchy.
- Political Disenfranchisement: Following the Reconstruction era, Southern states systematically dismantled Black political power. Through a combination of poll taxes, selectively applied literacy tests, and “grandfather clauses” that exempted most whites, states effectively disenfranchised the vast majority of Black voters.4 This ensured that the very people subjected to Jim Crow laws had no democratic means to change them.
- Social Control: The system extended into the most personal aspects of life. Anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriage, were common throughout the South and in many Northern states, a practice the Supreme Court did not declare unconstitutional until its Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967.4
- Enforcement by Terror: This entire legal architecture was buttressed by extralegal violence. The Jim Crow system was reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by vigilante groups, creating a climate of fear that violently suppressed any challenge to the established racial order.8
A deep analysis of this period reveals a system that was not merely a collection of discriminatory laws but a self-perpetuating closed loop of oppression.
Each component of the system reinforced the others, creating an almost inescapable cycle.
It began with legal oppression through Jim Crow laws, which codified an unequal society.
This was locked in place by political disenfranchisement, which denied African Americans the power to elect representatives who could repeal those laws.
Denied political power and facing legal discrimination, Black communities were then subjected to economic subjugation, trapped in a low-wage labor economy with severely limited opportunities for advancement.7
This economic powerlessness, in turn, crippled their ability to fund legal challenges or exert the political influence necessary to break the cycle.
The system was designed to be self-sustaining, perpetuating its damaging effects long after its explicitly discriminatory laws were finally struck down.9
It was a single, interlocking machine of racial subordination.
The Classroom Divide: Forging Inequality from Childhood
Nowhere was the machinery of inequality more ruthlessly efficient than in the realm of education.
The “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy was, in practice, a cruel fiction.
The reality was a dual school system defined by deliberate and systemic inequality, designed not to educate but to handicap generations of minority children from birth.
Schools designated for Black children were systematically and intentionally underfunded.
This translated into tangible, daily disadvantages: shorter school years, dilapidated and unsafe buildings, a dearth of basic resources like up-to-date textbooks, and severely overcrowded classrooms.10
In some Southern states, the average class size in Black schools was more than double that in white schools.10
The financial disparity was immense; one analysis showed that in 1964, predominantly white school districts received an estimated $23 billion more in funding than districts primarily serving students of color.12
The barriers to education were often absolute.
In the 19th century, many Southern states had passed laws making it a crime to teach enslaved or even free Black people to read and write.3
Even after the Civil War and into the 20th century, access to secondary education for African Americans remained severely limited, particularly in the South.11
The statistical results of this educational apartheid were as predictable as they were devastating.
The system was engineered to produce unequal outcomes, and it succeeded.
| Metric | Disparity in Pre-1964 America | Source(s) |
| Literacy Rate (1880) | The illiteracy rate for Black Southerners over age 10 was 76.2%, compared to 21.5% for whites. | 10 |
| High School Completion (c. 1960) | Black children had only half the chance of completing high school as white children. | 13 |
| College Completion (c. 1960) | Black Americans had only one-third the chance of completing college as their white peers. | 13 |
| College Enrollment (1960) | Black students constituted just 4.3% of the total nationwide college enrollment. | 14 |
| Per-Pupil Spending (c. 1950) | In Louisiana, spending in Black schools was 62 cents for every dollar spent in white schools (an improvement from 17 cents in the early 20th century). | 10 |
| Professional Access (c. 1960) | A Black child had only one-third the chance of entering a profession when they grew up. | 13 |
This was a reality lived by millions.
The story of Jane Ellen McAllister, who traveled from the Jim Crow South to earn her doctorate from Teachers College in 1929, is a testament to the extraordinary will required to overcome these barriers.
She was driven by the poignant understanding that “Poorly prepared teachers teach poorly prepared students to become poorly prepared teachers,” a direct indictment of the cycle of disadvantage the segregated system was built to create.15
It becomes clear that the segregated education system was not merely a social policy; it was the primary engine for manufacturing and perpetuating intergenerational disadvantage.
The process was brutally logical.
First, grossly unequal inputs in the form of funding and resources guaranteed an inferior quality of primary and secondary education.
This led directly to disparate outcomes, such as lower high school completion rates and abysmal college enrollment figures.
Without the necessary educational credentials, access to professional careers and higher-paying jobs was effectively blocked for the vast majority of African Americans.
This, in turn, ensured that the next generation would be born into the same economic precarity, starting the cycle anew.
The system was not just segregating students; it was segregating futures.
The Economy of Exclusion: A Market Rigged by Race and Gender
The economic landscape of pre-1964 America was a direct reflection of its social and educational systems: a marketplace fundamentally structured by race and gender.
The notion of a “free market” where individuals rise or fall based on merit was a fiction for the vast majority of the population.
In reality, it was a managed economy where one’s demographic identity was the primary determinant of one’s economic role and potential.
The wage gaps were staggering.
In 1950, the average Black man earned only 60% of the wages of the average white man.16
By 1959, the median income for a nonwhite family was just 57% of that for a white family.17
This disparity persisted even when comparing men and women working in the very same jobs.18
Women of all races faced a “double jeopardy” of discrimination.
In the early 1960s, women earned only about 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gap that held true across nearly all education levels.18
A woman with a master’s degree, for instance, was often paid less than a man with only a bachelor’s degree.20
These income disparities, however, were dwarfed by the chasm in wealth—the accumulated assets that form the true foundation of economic security.
This gap was the direct legacy of centuries of stolen labor under slavery and decades of denied opportunity under Jim Crow.
Immediately after Emancipation, the white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio was nearly 60-to-1.
While it narrowed over the next century, it was still a stark 7-to-1 in 1950.
More than 70 years later, it remains at 6-to-1, a testament to the enduring effects of discriminatory housing policies, unfair lending practices (“redlining”), and exclusion from primary wealth-building assets like corporate stock.9
Entire sectors of the economy were functionally closed to minorities and women.
“Help Wanted” advertisements in newspapers were openly segregated, listing separate jobs for “White” and “Colored” applicants, and for men and women.23
This was not subtle bias; it was explicit, public, and legal exclusion.
For those who did manage to enter traditionally white, male spaces, the environment could be brutally hostile.
The experience of Ron Law, a Black shipyard worker who, decades later, still found nooses hanging in his workplace, is a visceral reminder that this economic exclusion was enforced not just by policy but by the ever-present threat of racist terror.24
The evidence dismantles any notion that this was a merit-based economy.
It was, in effect, a racial and gender caste system.
The path to economic subjugation was clear and systematic.
First, barriers to entry, forged in a segregated and unequal education system, were reinforced by overtly discriminatory hiring practices.
Second, for those who managed to overcome these barriers, the principle of unequal pay for equal work ensured they would earn significantly less than their white male counterparts.
Third, discriminatory promotion practices and hostile work environments created a “glass ceiling” that suppressed any chance of upward mobility.
Finally, the denial of access to capital through fair housing and lending practices prevented the accumulation of wealth, locking communities into a cycle of economic powerlessness.
Any policy that merely called for “equal opportunity” without addressing these deep, structural fortifications was addressing a symptom, not the disease.
It was this rigged economic game that civil rights legislation sought to fundamentally alter.
Part II: The Epiphany of Proaction: Forging a New Remedy
The sheer scale and systemic nature of American inequality eventually forced a profound intellectual and legal shift.
Policymakers and civil rights leaders came to realize that a passive approach to equality—simply declaring discrimination illegal and waiting for society to correct itself—was wholly inadequate.
The problem was too deep, the disadvantages too entrenched.
This realization led to the creation of a new kind of remedy, one based not on neutrality but on proactive intervention.
It was a solution born from the epiphany that to fix a rigged race, you couldn’t just change the rules mid-contest; you had to actively help the disadvantaged runner catch up.
The Racetrack Analogy: A New Lens on Fairness
For me, the intellectual key that unlocked the logic behind affirmative action was the racetrack analogy.
Imagine a 400-meter race.
The starting gun fires, but only some of the runners are allowed to start.
Another runner is held at the starting line, forced to watch as their competitors complete three-quarters of the race.
Then, a race official walks over and says, “Okay, the track is open to you now.
You are free to compete.” Is that a fair race?.2
The answer is self-evidently No. This simple analogy exposes the fundamental flaw in applying a purely “colorblind” legal standard to a society with a deep history of “color-conscious” oppression.
Simply removing the legal barriers—the “chains” in President Johnson’s formulation—was not enough to create genuine equality of opportunity.
It ignored the massive, multi-generational head start that had been legally granted to one group and the compounding disadvantages that had been legally imposed upon others.
As Johnson so powerfully stated, it is not enough to merely “open the gates of opportunity.” A just society must ensure that “all our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates”.1
This requires acknowledging and addressing the unequal starting positions.
This shift in perspective is perfectly encapsulated in the very term chosen to describe the new policy: “affirmative action.” The choice of words was deliberate, strategic, and revolutionary.
Previous anti-discrimination efforts, such as those under President Eisenhower, were widely seen as ineffective because they were passive; they relied on individuals to file complaints of discrimination after the fact.25
The drafters of the new policy, Hobart Taylor Jr. and George Bunn, wanted to signal a fundamental change in approach.
They specifically coined the phrase “affirmative action” to “emphasize that employers must
actively combat discrimination,” rather than passively wait for it to be reported.25
This was a seismic shift in legal philosophy.
It moved the burden of responsibility for creating equality from the shoulders of the individual victim, who had to prove they were wronged, to the powerful institution, which now had to demonstrate it was taking positive, concrete steps to ensure fairness.
It transformed equality from a passive state to be presumed into an active goal to be pursued.
“Take Affirmative Action”: The Revolutionary Shift of Executive Order 10925
The first official deployment of this new, proactive philosophy came on March 6, 1961, when President John F.
Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925.25
This landmark order marked the first time the phrase “affirmative action” appeared in U.S. federal policy.
It mandated that companies holding contracts with the federal government must “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin”.26
To give this new mandate force, the order also established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO), to be chaired by Vice President Lyndon Johnson.25
The PCEEO was not a mere advisory body; it was an enforcement mechanism.
It was directed to “scrutinize and study employment practices” of the government and its contractors and to recommend “additional affirmative steps” to eliminate discrimination.28
This included the power to investigate complaints and recommend sanctions for non-compliant contractors.
Executive Order 10925 was a masterful piece of political and legal strategy, representing a pragmatic, surgical strike that used the government’s economic power as a lever for social change.
At the time, passing a comprehensive civil rights bill through a Congress where powerful committees were controlled by staunch segregationists was seen as a political impossibility.
The executive branch, however, wielded a different kind of power: the power of the purse.
The federal government was one of the largest purchasers of goods and services in the world.
By tying anti-discrimination requirements to these federal contracts, the Kennedy administration could compel a significant portion of the nation’s private sector to adopt new, more equitable employment practices as a condition of doing business.
It was a way to pilot and implement the core concept of affirmative action in the real world, affecting millions of workers without having to wait for a legislative miracle that might never come.
It was a crucial first step that used economic leverage to advance the cause of justice.
Putting Law to the Theory: The Civil Rights Act and Executive Order 11246
The groundwork laid by Executive Order 10925 was soon reinforced and vastly expanded by a pair of landmark actions that together form the bedrock of modern civil rights law.
This combination—a sweeping legislative act followed by a potent executive order—created a comprehensive framework for attacking discrimination on a national scale.
First came the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a monumental achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.29
After years of marches, protests, and political struggle, this legislation provided the universal legal foundation for equality.
Its key provisions, Title VII and Title VI, were transformative.
Title VII outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin across the vast majority of the private and public sectors.30
Title VI prohibited discrimination in any program or activity—most notably schools and universities—that received federal financial assistance.32
The Act officially sounded the death knell for the Jim Crow system and made overt discrimination illegal nationwide.
Building on this new legislative authority, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 on September 24, 1965.26
This order superseded Kennedy’s earlier one and dramatically strengthened the affirmative action requirements for federal contractors.
It was no longer enough to simply pledge to take affirmative action; EO 11246 operationalized the concept, giving it regulatory teeth.
It required contractors to:
- Develop written affirmative action plans with specific goals and timetables for increasing the representation of minorities and women.26
- Submit to the authority of a new, more powerful enforcement agency, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC), housed within the Department of Labor.26
- File regular compliance reports, including detailed employment statistics, to allow the government to monitor progress and identify areas of non-compliance.28
| Year | Legislation/Order | Key Mandate | Scope & Significance |
| 1961 | Executive Order 10925 | “The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed… without regard to their race…” 28 | Introduced the term “affirmative action” into federal policy. Shifted from passive non-discrimination to a proactive mandate. Targeted federal contractors. 25 |
| 1964 | Civil Rights Act (Title VII) | “It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer… to discriminate against any individual… because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 27 | Provided the broad, universal legal prohibition against employment discrimination. Established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). 30 |
| 1964 | Civil Rights Act (Title VI) | “No person… shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in… any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 32 | Prohibited discrimination in all federally funded programs, including universities and schools, laying the groundwork for affirmative action in education. |
| 1965 | Executive Order 11246 | Required federal contractors to develop written affirmative action plans, set goals, and comply with enforcement by the new Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC). 27 | Operationalized the concept of affirmative action, giving it enforcement “teeth” and making it a systematic, data-driven practice for contractors. 26 |
Together, the Civil Rights Act and Executive Order 11246 created a powerful “one-two punch” strategy for change.
The Act delivered the universal prohibition—a clear, nationwide legal and moral statement that discrimination was illegal.
It established the fundamental principle of equality.
The Executive Order then provided the specific, enforceable methodology for compliance.
It answered the crucial question, “What does it mean in practice to not discriminate?” with a clear directive: It means taking affirmative action, creating a plan, analyzing your workforce, setting goals, and reporting on your progress.
The Act provided the moral authority, while the Order provided the operational framework.
This dual approach, combining a broad legal principle with a targeted, proactive practice, was far more powerful and transformative than either measure would have been in isolation.
Part III: The Moral and Legal Foundations of the Remedy
As affirmative action policies moved from executive orders to widespread implementation, they were built upon two distinct but related philosophical and legal justifications.
The first was backward-looking, rooted in the concept of justice as a remedy for past wrongs.
The second was forward-looking, focused on the societal benefits of creating diverse institutions.
These two rationales—remedy and diversity—have formed the intellectual and legal pillars of affirmative action for over half a century, and the tension between them has defined its controversial history.
A Debt to Be Paid: Affirmative Action as Restorative Justice
The original and most fundamental justification for affirmative action is that it is a necessary remedy for the deep, cumulative, and lasting effects of past and ongoing discrimination.37
Proponents of this view argue that it is not enough to simply cease discriminating; a just society must make active efforts to “erase the effects of past discrimination” and attempt to “place minorities in the same position they would be in if the centuries of discrimination had not occurred”.37
This is the logic of restorative justice.
This concept can be understood through the powerful metaphor of moral accounting.39
If a society, through its laws and customs, has systematically taken opportunities, wealth, and dignity from a specific group of its citizens, it has created a profound “moral debit.” From this perspective, affirmative action is a form of societal “restitution.” It is an attempt to “pay back” what was taken, not with cash, but with the currency of opportunity—through targeted recruitment, training programs, and preferential consideration in hiring and admissions.
The goal is to rebalance the moral books by counteracting the effects of historical injustice.39
This remedial rationale found its clearest legal application in court-ordered affirmative action plans designed to fix proven, egregious cases of discrimination.
A stark example is the case of United States v.
Paradise, where for nearly four decades the Alabama Department of Public Safety had systematically and intentionally excluded all Black people from its ranks of state troopers.
As a remedy, a federal court ordered a one-for-one promotion plan—for every white trooper promoted, a qualified Black trooper had to be promoted as well—until the department developed a fair and non-discriminatory promotion process.37
Here, affirmative action was a direct, court-supervised tool to dismantle a specific, documented history of discrimination.
However, this very logic reveals a core tension that has been at the heart of the affirmative action debate ever since.
The problem being addressed—systemic discrimination—was inherently group-based.
It targeted individuals because they belonged to a certain group (e.g., African Americans, women).
Therefore, the most logical and effective remedy would also be group-focused.
This, however, runs into conflict with the strong emphasis on individual rights in the American legal tradition.
Critics argue that it is fundamentally unjust to penalize an “innocent” individual from a majority group to compensate for the societal wrongs of past generations, or to benefit a member of a minority group who may not have been a direct, personal victim of the specific discrimination being remedied.40
Proponents counter that the discrimination was so pervasive and systemic that
all members of the disfavored group suffered its effects (through limited opportunities, depressed wages, segregated communities, and lack of intergenerational wealth), while all members of the favored group received some indirect benefit from the system, even if they were not personally prejudiced.
In this view, a group-conscious remedy is the only way to address a group-based harm.
This unresolved tension between the pursuit of group justice and the protection of individual rights has fueled the legal and political battles over affirmative action for decades.
A Stronger Society: The Compelling Interest of Diversity
As the legal challenges to affirmative action mounted, a second, forward-looking rationale emerged and eventually became central to its defense, particularly in the realm of higher education: the pursuit of diversity.
While remedying past discrimination was the original impetus, the argument that diversity is a “compelling state interest” provided a more durable legal foundation for these policies.
The pivotal moment for this shift was the Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v.
Bakke.42
The case involved a white applicant, Allan Bakke, who was denied admission to the UC Davis School of Medicine, which had a rigid quota system that set aside 16 out of 100 seats specifically for minority applicants.
The Court, in a fractured ruling, found that such explicit racial quotas were unconstitutional and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.43
However, the decision did not strike down affirmative action entirely.
In his controlling opinion, which became the law of the land for decades, Justice Lewis Powell carved out a crucial exception.
He argued that while quotas were illegal, the pursuit of a diverse student body was a constitutionally permissible goal for a university.
He concluded that race could be considered as
one factor among many—a “plus” factor—in a holistic admissions process designed to achieve the educational benefits of diversity.1
The diversity argument posits that a vibrant mix of students from different backgrounds, races, and experiences benefits everyone within the educational environment.
It exposes students to a wider range of perspectives, challenges stereotypes, enhances critical thinking and cross-cultural communication skills, and ultimately better prepares all students to live and lead in an increasingly pluralistic and globalized society.46
This shift from a “remedy” rationale to a “diversity” rationale was a strategic masterstroke that reframed the entire purpose of affirmative action.
The backward-looking “remedy” argument was legally vulnerable under the Supreme Court’s “strict scrutiny” standard because of the “imprecise connection” between the group-based remedy and specific harm to individuals.
The forward-looking “diversity” argument cleverly sidestepped this problem by changing the primary beneficiary of the policy.
Instead of being a policy designed primarily to benefit a wronged minority group, affirmative action became a policy designed to benefit the entire institution and all of its students by creating a superior educational environment.
This reframing was far more palatable to the courts.
It transformed the policy from one of reparation for a past wrong to one of enhancement for a future good.
This made it much easier to defend as a “compelling interest” of the state, providing the critical legal foundation that allowed race-conscious admissions policies to survive in American higher education for the next 45 years.
It shifted the conversation from one of debt and restitution to one of enrichment and excellence.
Conclusion: Why the Origin Story Still Matters
My journey through the legal and social history of the United States forced a difficult but necessary evolution in my own thinking.
I began with a firm belief in the simple comfort of a “colorblind” ideal, only to be confronted with the complex and painful truth that for most of its history, American law was the chief architect of a deeply color-conscious system of oppression.
The scales of justice were not merely imbalanced; they were forged that Way.
This history is not a footnote to the story of affirmative action; it is the story itself.
Affirmative action was not conceived in a vacuum, born from a desire to grant “preferences” or “advantages” within a fair and functioning system.
It was forged in the crucible of that system’s undeniable and catastrophic failure.
It was a conscious, deliberate, and proactive remedy designed to counteract centuries of conscious, deliberate, and proactive discrimination.
It was an admission that passive neutrality—simply declaring the rules of the race to be fair from now on—was a hollow promise to those who had been hobbled for generations.
To debate the merits, flaws, and future of affirmative action today without first grappling with the brutal, systemic inequality that necessitated its creation is to engage in a discussion devoid of its essential context.
The origin story matters because it defines the fundamental nature of the problem the policy was created to solve.
It reminds us that the goal was never to tinker with a fair system, but to begin the arduous process of fixing a broken one.
Any honest evaluation of the solution, then, must begin with an unflinching look at the scale of the injustice that made it, at the time, seem so necessary.
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