What Did the SFFA Court “Say to John?” White Innocents, Reciprocal Democratic Sacrifice, & the Message of Affirmative Action

This Article rejects claims (1) that there is a moral equivalence between the racial classifications associated with Jim Crow and the racial classifications associated with affirmative action and (2) that raceconscious admissions programs punish white Americans.First, it is possible to help those in urgent need and the political community at large without wronging others.Second, a failure to acknowledge the unavoidability of reciprocal democratic sacrifice enables members of the Supreme Court of the United States and others to pretend that any burden placed on "innocents" is undue.Third, this pretension conveys the highly dangerous message that Black gain necessarily depends upon corresponding substantial and unjustifiable white loss.Finally, the Article invites the articulation of alternative messages that attempt to recover the commonsense ordinariness of affirmative action.Alternative messages of this kind would arm nonbeneficiaries with the resources necessary to reconcile themselves to the unavoidability of reciprocal democratic sacrifice and enable them to pursue accomplishments and relationships free from avoidable complicity in American society's unexpiated crimes.