The Plessy Court blamed blacks’ own perception for any sense of inferiority from segregation

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

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

Related

• Plessy held racial inferiority was self-imposed by black people, not state action (similarity 0.90)
• Plessy’s majority dismissed segregation’s meaning as black misperception (similarity 0.86)
• Plessy held that law cannot legislate social equality, validating separate but equal (similarity 0.79)