When We Were Colorblind
By Some images from the Georgia of Clarence Thomas’s youth, where race simply wasn’t a major issue.
As Henry Billings Brown wrote in a classic of conservative jurisprudence, “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” As Justice Stevens notes, this version of history remains influential among conservatives today.