  Because the Aristotelian principle by itself doesn’t rule out racial preferences (since blacks and whites may be relevantly different with respect to certain legitimate public purposes), it is not surprising that Cohen also invokes a substantive conception of equality: “All members of humankind are equally ends in themselves, all have equal dignity—and therefore all are entitled to equal respect from the community and its laws” (Cohen and Sterba 2003, 24). This principle, however, brings us back to the interpretive questions about “equal protection of the laws” played out in the Powell-Brennan exchange in Bakke. By Justice Brennan’s lights, Allen Bakke’s basic dignity was not violated. The Medical School’s two-track policy that resulted in Bakke’s rejection did not, by intent or effect, stigmatize him as inferior, or mark him off as a member of a despised caste, or turn him into a second-class citizen. Bakke arguably had to bear a particular burden because of his race but the burden was not significantly different objectively from others that public policy might have thrown his way. If the Medical School had reserved sixteen of its seats for applicants from economically deprived backgrounds, no one would have suggested that it had violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet under this hypothetical policy Allan Bakke could have lost out as well—lost out to low-income applicants whose college grades and MCAT scores were inferior to his own. Allen Bakke may have felt aggrieved at losing out under the Medical School’s policy of racial preferences, but it is not enough to show that those who lose out under some public scheme feel offended or disgruntled. Cohen needs to specify a conception of dignity in which bearing unequal burdens on behalf of urgent social ends invariably amounts to an assault on dignity if the burdens happen to be assigned by race. This specification remains unfinished in his work so far. 