THE UNIVERSITY is under a microscope thanks to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Schuette vs. Bamn. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 58-page dissenting opinion in which she argues that “race matters.” She called the six justices who voted in favor of upholding Michigan’s ban, “out of touch.” News outlets across the country have tried to diminish the scholarly and legal reasoning of the opinion by referring to it as “blistering,” “scathing” and “outraged.”

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent gets to the heart of the matter and gets it right. She argues that thanks to a “long and lamentable” history of racial discrimination we can connect important points often overlooked in the debate over Michigan’s affirmative action ban. For starters, Justice Sotomayor identifies “countless examples” of states denying racial minorities access to the political process or equal opportunity, forcing the courts to intervene.

Here are just two of Justice Sotomayor’s examples:

After the landmark 1954 Brown v Board of Education ruling on school desegregation, the school board in Arlington County, Virgina, crafted a desegregation plan. The Virginia General Assembly then voted to make that county’s school board an appointed body. In Louisiana, the legislature gave the governor the authority to overrule any school board’s decision to integrate. In 1958, Arkansas legislators passed a law allowing the governor to close any public school in the state. Governor Orval Faubus then closed all of Little Rock’s high schools rather than allow desegregation.

Universities can legally give preferences to applicants. For instance, universities may take into account whether an applicant’s parents or grandparents are graduates (so-called “legacy” admissions). Universities base admission on a student’s athleticism or a student’s geographical origin or a student’s area of study. Universities take into account whether an out-of-state student will bring in extra tuition dollars—at the expense of in-state residents.

Justice Sotomayor asks: why is special treatment for some applicants acceptable, but efforts to achieve racial diversity are not? What’s going on is perfectly obvious and it’s a form of educational and socio-economic discrimination that has been going on for hundreds of years in the United States.

It’s a hard truth to recognize that our country has not become a post-racial society, particularly after the election of America’s first black president. Racism has become much more subtle, taking the form of attacks on voting rights. In Arizona and Kansas for instance, GOP officials support requiring birth certificates, passports and other documents that establish proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in state and local elections. Such documents are not necessary to register for federal elections.

U-M officials recently announced a new initiative to increase black student enrollment by making the university a more welcoming place for black students. Race matters.

As William Faulkner wrote in The Sound and The Fury, published in 1929, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”