Abstract

This Article builds upon the foundation laid in 2018 in Racial Justice Demands Truth & Reconciliation, which outlined the sad reality of "a persistent, deeply-rooted systemic racism [that] has worked, without interruption, to oppress people of color on this continent . . . [f]rom the earliest days of the slave markets of Virginia in 1619, to the [present-day's continuing] economic disadvantages and disproportionately-skewed criminal justice system." The human toll of this centuries-long cruel travesty, as described by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is tragic and heartbreaking.

The discussion continues in this Article through the review of various possible constitutional bases for efforts toward advancing the goal of racial truth and reconciliation in America. It begins conventionally enough in Part I, in considering the potential of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause for enabling the further steps needed to advance the elusive goals of a racially just society. It is the Equal Protection Clause, after all, that has been the constitutional basis for much racial and other social justice progress over the past 60-some years, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and continuing into the Civil Rights era and beyond. This Article explains, however, that arguments based on the Equal Protection Clause now face a number of steep challenges in the Supreme Court, to the point where many of the earlier gains have stagnated and even regressed, largely due to the Court's adoption of an organizing approach based on the "antidiscrimination" principle.

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