...the majority, Justice Henry B. Brown wrote that "the underlying fallacy" of Plessy's argument was its "assumption that the enforced separation of the two...stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority." A law that "implies merely a legal distinction" between blacks and whites did not violate the Thirteenth...

...instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences." It was incorrect (said Brown) to say that "the enforced separation of the two races stamps...the colored race with a badge of inferiority." If blacks so interpreted it, that was unfortunate, but entirely their own doing. Did Brown really believe...

...race."109 Nevertheless, the Court insisted that such an interpretation was fallacious and not supported ' 'by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put their construction upon it" (551). Likewise, the Court dismissed the argument that racial discrimination...

...promoting institutional racism and established the constitutionality of de jure segregation by stating that "the assumption that the enforced separation of the...stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority ... is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put...

...state's imposing a stigma on a group. That Court, however, upheld segregation in railway cars, denying that "the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority." 75 The Plessy Court apparently believed that if segregation does somehow impose a stamp of inferiority,...

...challenged laws. Most notoriously, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice Henry Billings Brown declared, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's...stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority." A distinction between people on the basis of race, in other words, was not necessarily a discrimination...

...the statute imposed a "badge of inferiority" on African Americans, Justice Henry B. Brown argued that "if this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race has chosen to put that construction upon it." By contrast, in his famous but widely misunderstood dissent,...

...this finding in the majority opinion: We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument in the assumption that the enforced separation of...stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. . . . The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation and that equal...

...equality, or a commingling of the two races on terms unsatisfactory to either." Calling fallacious "the assumption that the enforced separation of the...stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority," the justice said the act does not support this construction. Using a test of reasonableness, the Court,...

...class."" And they rejected the attack on the law in question as heing insufficient hecause it rested on "the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a hadge of inferiority," rather than in proof that such a stigma was intended." But given the estahlished...