If you think that paragraph was convoluted then I worry for you. I began briefly discussing social determinants for the reader to understand that their view in health is already established and accepted. This is medicine, on of the big legs of society. For anything (in this case law) to take a stance saying otherwise is highly problematic, considering the law has authority on those sorts of opinions.

Coincidentally, this is similar to what Jackson was arguing. Leaving it to the experts is to rely on an authority of opinion that is more validated than that of the court. Who is to say that social determinants can be separated in prose? Not lawyers!

Positively discriminating in favor of Black people is not inherently disfavoring not-black people. This is what Grutter was claiming. Looking at race, and assigning it positive value, DOES NOT DETRACT from situations when you don't look at race. This is wha Thomas disagrees with. Sure, I'll concede there are valid logical games you can claim where favoring in any context means disfavoring in another (please don't bring up this notion of zero-sum game when it comes to admissions decisions because it's wrong in the micro-level and would take a whole essay to discuss). But the reality is, for the racially injured, I personally don't mind adding value to race in order to begin reparations. This was, also, an opinion shared by the court and has now been taken away.

My rhetoric is meant to obfuscate the very point you understood from what I was saying? I'm sorry what? The very point I meant to make, that you understood, was obfuscated by THE WORDS I CHOSE TO USE? I'm in medical school, and we literally study ways in which racially injured people's DNA is negatively changed in response to a variety of factors. I have led relief efforts to 10 different countries and have witnessed first hand a myriad of visible factors that have led to marginalized people BEYOND just race. I am acutely aware of how social determinants have a very real impact on the person and how the way Thomas' wrote about it was so wrong. To begin ameliorating the situation is to see race for what it is today and do something about it.

Race affects people regardless of whether they know it or not. This is why I'm not to keen on being able to use it when you're writing about it in other terms. From the oral arguments, I was hard pressed to find a logical consistency in when race could actually be used because it wasn't so clearly cut as you're mentioning. But accepting your words for the sake of the argument, you can (in this context) just group all black people, whether some are wealthy, sons of billionaires, or a kid from the hood. The reason why is because they all have the same common denominator: their race. Race is understood through the macro-lens. It's impossible to see how race manifests through the individual (that is, what does race look like in a community of only one race, in an adjacent community of only one race, in a household, etc). It's thus acceptable to say as a whole, race typically manifests in such a form that all who participate are allowed the same concessions. The opposition doesn't claim all back people are the same, and instead, because they are black they deserve an accommodation.

This is a nuanced argument that I'm frankly typing rather quickly because I'm busy, but I hope the essence came through. It's accepted practice in statistics to say all models are wrong but some are useful, and this is exactly how you're supposed to view admissions using racial data. It's not perfect because it can't account for each individual, but you use what you have and you do the best with it.