On Monday, Sept. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court did the unthinkable: it gave the Trump administration the power to use race as a “relevant factor” in stopping and detaining people in Los Angeles. To be clear, as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh likes to say, ethnicity—especially of the “Mexico and Central America” variety—is fair game for roundups, detentions, brutal takedowns, and arrests. But no need to worry, the good justice assures us: ICE is legally bound to target only the “bad guys.” If you are legal, everything is fine. But this pie-in-the-sky assurance couldn’t be farther from the truth.
For years, conservatives on the court have claimed to be “colorblind.” They struck down affirmative action, insisting that race has no place in education or public policy. Yet when it comes to criminalizing our communities, suddenly race matters. This is the contradiction at the heart of the Roberts Court: no race in college admissions, but race is admissible in immigration stops.
The real problem in this Sept. 8 decision is that the Supreme Court justices are now saying the quiet part aloud: Brown skin is a problem to be policed. And that leaves us with a dangerous question—can a country built on such contradictions hold together when its highest court openly sanctions racism against millions of its own people?