Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson encouraged people to address and confront “uncomfortable lessons” about race during a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, on Friday.
Jackson, who wrote a dissent on a recent Supreme Court ruling that restrictedrace-conscious admissions practices in higher education, said some U.S. history lessons are hard to think about but are often the ones that need remembering.
The comments come a few months after the historic ruling that overturned affirmative action in colleges and universities. In her 29-page dissent, Jackson accused the court’s conservative majority of suffering from “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” and warned that deeming “race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”