Of course, there’s an obvious possible answer to the question of why some Americans are still dead set on ending affirmative action. “The strength and the intensity of the opposition to affirmative action can’t be explained without reference to bald racism,” Richard Thompson Ford, a law professor at Stanford University, said. In his view, the Harvard case is unlikely to bring to a close the endless cycles of litigation. Some affirmative-action opponents, he thinks, simply want to see fewer Black and brown faces at freshman orientation, and the lawsuits won’t stop until that happens.