Daily Inspiration Quote by Harry A. Blackmun

Colorblindness is a comforting myth in a country built on color-coded outcomes, and Blackmun punctures it with a jurist’s blunt logic. “Take account of race” isn’t a celebration of categories; it’s an admission of evidence. If racism has been historically administered through law, housing, schooling, and hiring practices, then pretending race is invisible doesn’t neutralize the damage - it preserves it. The line works because it refuses the moral shortcut: equality isn’t a vibe, it’s an outcome with a paper trail.

As a judge, Blackmun is writing against a popular rhetorical move in American politics and jurisprudence: collapsing “fairness” into identical treatment. His second sentence is the pivot. “Treat them differently” is easily caricatured as favoritism, but he’s getting at a more uncomfortable principle: when people start from different places because of state-sanctioned exclusion, neutrality can function as a subsidy for the status quo. The subtext is that law is never simply passive; it either corrects inequity or ratifies it.

The context matters: Blackmun’s reasoning sits in the late-20th-century battles over affirmative action and equal protection, where the Supreme Court wrestled with whether the Constitution permits race-conscious remedies for race-conscious harms. His intent is remedial, not essentialist. Race here is not destiny; it’s a metric of injury.

The quote’s sting is that it flips the burden. The real “special treatment” wasn’t affirmative action - it was the long, quiet head start embedded in American institutions.