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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court has been very busy lately making clear which kinds of people it truly values. By striking down Roe vs. Wade, the justices showed us how much they value the opinions of women who want a say in their own health care. By striking down affirmative action, they showed us how much they value White over Black and Brown students. […] And today they essentially legalized the unequal treatment of LGBTQ people [by permitting religion-based discrimination against them].
The reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022 affects negatively not only the health and well-being of women across all classes, but also their sense that they matter and are perceived as fully independent and competent citizens by their government.
How much we matter to society turns out to matter a lot to us. It matters for our happiness, our well-being, and the opportunities we will have in life. And how much we matter has a lot to do with whether we belong to socially valued groups or not. For example, men tend to matter more than women, white people more than members of Black/Indigenous/People of Color (BIPOC) communities, heterosexual people more than lesbian/gay/ bisexual people, and cisgender people more than trans people. And this difference in mattering is at the heart of all forms of systemic inequality, which turns out to be a matter (so to speak) of valuing some people more than others and enshrining that difference in valuation through differential treatment.
But don't take my word for that. Let's consider some evidence. We’ll start with racial segregation in the United States, a powerful example of what happens when the desire of white people to live in white-only neighborhoods matters more than the desire of Black people to live in integrated neighborhoods. Historical studies of segregation demonstrate that Black people did not choose to live in segregated neighborhoods; rather, white people systematically forced Black people into housing segregation by refusing to rent or sell to them or to live in the same neighborhoods, a refusal supported by both the federal government and private citizens, and involving strategies ranging from lying to legal discrimination to violence.
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