He is right. For decades we have been finessing the issue with a mess of compromises, euphemisms, incoherences and pretenses such as banning racial quotas but promoting racial "goals." Anyone who has ever had to make hiring or admission decisions knows that this angel-on-the-head-of-pin distinction is 95 percent a matter of appearances, gestures and lawsuit-avoiding paperwork.

And yet we have muddled our way through, permitting a large dose of intentional discrimination to ameliorate past discrimination -- and present inadvertent imbalances -- without totally abandoning the ideal of colorblindness.

The result? At the near half-century mark of the Civil Rights Act, racial minorities have seen remarkable social advancement. The younger generation is infinitely more racially tolerant and accepting. We've made great racial progress. But the fundamental unfairness that underlies the racial spoils system continues to rankle. That's what animated the Ricci case.

We're 45 years beyond passage of the Civil Rights Act. We have a black attorney general and a black president. As with every passing year we move generationally away from the era of Jim Crow, it becomes less and less justified for the government to mandate "remedial" racial discrimination. Which is why in one of her last opinions, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that "the Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."

The import of Ricci, which raised the bar on reverse discrimination, is that it heads us once again toward that day -- and back to true colorblindness that was the original vision, and everlasting glory, of the civil rights movement.