Plessy v. Ferguson foreshadowed Woke Social Justice - separate, unequal but equitable

When I was growing up, it was uniformly held that Plessy v. Ferguson was one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever passed.  The badness of the decision was foundational for a Classical Liberal mind.  The belief that the civil rights embedded in the US Constitution could be overruled by States was anathema.  From Wikipedia.  

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". Notably the court ruled the existence of laws based upon race was not inherently racial discrimination. The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era (1865–1877).

The underlying case began in 1892 when Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a "whites-only" train car in New Orleans. By boarding the whites-only car, Plessy violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which required "equal, but separate" railroad accommodations for white and non-white passengers. Plessy was charged under the Act, and at his trial his lawyers argued that judge John Howard Ferguson should dismiss the charges on the grounds that the Act was unconstitutional. Ferguson denied the request, and the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Ferguson's ruling on appeal. Plessy then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May 1896, the Supreme Court issued a 7–1 decision against Plessy, ruling that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and stating that although the Fourteenth Amendment established the legal equality of whites and blacks it did not and could not require the elimination of all "distinctions based upon color". The Court rejected Plessy's lawyers' arguments that the Louisiana law inherently implied that black people were inferior, and gave great deference to American state legislatures' inherent power to make laws regulating health, safety, and morals—the "police power"—and to determine the reasonableness of the laws they passed. Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter from the Court's decision, writing that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens", and so the law's distinguishing of passengers' races should have been found unconstitutional.

Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. Despite its infamy, the decision has never been explicitly overruled. But a series of the Court's later decisions, beginning with the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education—which held that the "separate but equal" doctrine is unconstitutional in the context of public schools—have severely weakened Plessy to the point that it is considered to have been de facto overruled. The United States Congress regards Plessy as having been overruled by Bob Jones University v. United States.

In later years, I began to understand how they arrived at the bad decision that they did.  It can be seen as yet one more episode in the constant tidal pull between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.  Understanding the reasoning does not obviate its badness.  

Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter to this bad decision and he was very explicit as to why:

But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.

[snip]

The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.

Rereading a post I did some years ago, it occurs to me just how cognitively unsettled are our times.  The racist Woke Social Justice movement are entirely aligned with the Supreme Court majority of Plessy v. Ferguson ill-repute and are solidly against the principled position of Justice John Marshall Harlan.

Their position is that there has to be separate classes of citizens and that citizens should be treated differently from one another with regard to their civil rights.  That race should decide legal decisions.  That it is not only appropriate to impose a badge of servitude on individuals based on their race but is necessary.  

Which is astonishing when you reflect on it.  I can't imagine a single Woke Social Justice adherent making the argument that Plessy v. Ferguson was correctly decided because I cannot imagine any single sentient person making the argument that Plessy v. Ferguson was correctly decided.  

Yet I would be wrong.  The racist Woke Social Justice ideologue might not wish to be affiliated with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision owing to its notoriety, but by logic, they must be Plessy v. Ferguson cheerleaders.