In Plessy v. Ferguson, there was one judge that agreed that what Plessy did was not wrong. This judge was Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan. He believed that “our constitution is colorblind.” He wrote about this in the context that our constitution wasn’t written to have social classes and different races to be separated. Our constitution was created to outline our rights and not to outline the differences of social classes and different races. According to law, everyone that is a citizen is equal. Being “inconsistent with the civil freedom” is not “justified upon any legal grounds.”
The case of Plessy v. Ferguson was a 7 to 1 decision that Plessy was in the wrong. They thought with the separate but equal doctrine there was nothing wrong with Plessy having to be on the blacks only train car. Our constitution does not outline how races should be different. According to the constitution, a citizen is a citizen. A social class or someone's race does not determine how they should be treated.
Harlan wrote, “What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation.” This meant that if there was a sense of distrust towards another race, there would be separation established. There should not have been such punishment towards someone for sitting somewhere in a train. The Constitution did not support segregation, making it wrong for there to be different seating areas.
I honestly think Harlan should have had more people on his side since his opinion is what is right. His opinion was the start of a new beginning, having similar opinions follow after his dissent.
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