Trouble in Paradise: Equal Protection and the Dilemma of Interminority Group Conflict

In this note, Alexandra Natapoff analyzes several of the Supreme Court's major equal protection decisions in order to challenge the traditional bipolar black-white model that dominates this jurisprudence. Arguing that current antidiscrimination and affirmative action rationales are ill-equipped to protect minority group interests in a racially diverse polity, Ms. Natapoff offers a theoretical model of dynamic racial factionalism along Madisonian lines. She concludes that the Court should reinterpret the Equal Protection Clause to acknowledge racial group factionalism in general and the persistence of white majority influence in particular, both to better protect racial minorities against discrimination and to facilitate the full exercise of their political rights.