Plessy held racial inferiority was self-imposed by black people, not state action

Evidence

To explain its position, the Court added that the plaintiff’s argument was founded on a mistaken notion, principally “the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.” Even if such a thing were true, the opinion claimed, “it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 385

Categorization

• XREF: The Court’s claim that black people ‘choose’ to read inferiority into segregation foreshadows modern debates pairing racial inequality with individual perception or choice, echoing the Whiteness of Wealth’s saturation-system argument. — connects to: Plessy’s majority dismissed segregation’s meaning as black misperception — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2939
• DEFINE: Exposes the Court’s core move in Plessy: redefining a state-imposed harm as a matter of private interpretation, exactly the genre of reasoning reparations accounting must refute.