Jackson, J., dissenting
of thousands of applicants has the capacity to take full advantage of the opportunity to attend, and contribute to, this prestigious institution, and thus merits admission.[1] And UNC has concluded that ferreting this out requires understanding the full person, which means taking seriously not just SAT scores or whether the applicant plays the trumpet, but also any way in which the applicant’s race-linked experience bears on his capacity and merit. In this way, UNC is able to value what it means for James, whose ancestors received no race-based advantages, to make himself competitive for admission to a flagship school nevertheless. Moreover, recognizing this aspect of James’s story does not preclude UNC from valuing John’s legacy or any obstacles that his story reflects.
So, to repeat: UNC’s program permits, but does not require, admissions officers to value both John’s and James’s love for their State, their high schools’ rigor, and whether either has overcome obstacles that are indicative of their “persistence of commitment.”[2] It permits, but does not require, them to value John’s identity as a child of UNC alumni (or, perhaps, if things had turned out differently, as a first-generation White student from Appalachia whose family struggled to make ends meet during the Great Recession). And it permits, but does not require, them to value James’s race—not in the abstract, but as an element of who he is, no less than his love for his State, his high school courses, and the obstacles he has overcome.
Understood properly, then, what SFFA caricatures as an unfair race-based preference cashes out, in a holistic system, to a personalized assessment of the advantages and disadvantages that every applicant might have received by accident of birth plus all that has happened to them since. It ensures a full accounting of everything that bears on the
