Analysis

This excerpt from the legal opinion exemplifies the way the court haphazardly addressed the issue of race. The court did not make a bold statement rejecting the politics of anxiety that permeated this discourse. The fact that racial and ethnic classifications were labeled as inherently suspect exemplifies the vacuum in which this case was discussed and the way it did, in fact, take a stance on the issue, by circumventing the potential transformative decision that could have been made through their ruling. The use of the word “unnecessary” to portray the goal of higher education and its widespread impacts regarding the betterment of society. Of course, this case is not merely about a college acceptance letter- it is also, and most importantly, about access to wealth, access to upward mobility, access to rise from poverty, access in many forms that are critical to building a just and equitable society. So, it is important to be critical of the way language was used to nitpick and define narrowly in a way that escaped the ethos and scope of this decision and what it represented.