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Whatever the best practice may be, it more likely will be discerned from processes of political experimentation, innovation, and hard data than from judicial assumptions and anecdote.
Although it provided the basis for perpetuating racial advantage for several decades after its ratification, the Fourteenth Amendment also contained the seeds of redirection. Federalism enabled the Fourteenth Amendment’s architects to have it one way with respect to race and future generations to have it other ways. The amendment’s framers and ratifiers could prohibit gross racial impositions, but preserve for themselves the customary discriminations incident to a racist ideology. Over the course of time, values and attitudes evolved beyond those of 1868. The political process also became more inclusive. Particularly in the context of an increasingly diverse nation, in which groups are more likely to broker with than leverage themselves at the expense of the other, it is the thread that most satisfactorily ties original vision to management of modern racial reality.