What did Justice John Marshall Harlan I mean when he said 'the Constitution is color-blind'?

Answer 1

Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenting vote in the 7-1* Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896) verdict, wrote in his dissenting opinion:

"The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. 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 colorblind, 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 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."

Harlan further predicted that Plessy v. Ferguson would poison relations between the races:

"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."

Harlan, who later became known as "The Great Dissenter," stood alone on the Fuller Court as a champion of racial equality. Harlan was also the only dissenter on the Civil Rights Cases, (1883), a consolidation of several cases that undermined the progress toward equal rights established by federal legislation during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War.

Ironically, Harlan grew up in a wealthy, slave-owning Kentucky family, and initially opposed emancipation. Although he fought as a Colonel in the Union Army, Harlan threatened to quit the Union if Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When the emancipation became law, Harlan denounced the legislation as "unconstitutional, null and void," but did not carry through on his threat.

Harlan was elected State Attorney General of Kentucky in 1863, and joined the Republican party (which was more progressive at the time) in 1868. He also had a change of heart about the practice of slave-holding, declaring, " . . . the most perfect despotism that ever existed on this earth was the institution of African slavery. . . . With slavery it was death or tribute. . . . It knew no compromise, it tolerated no middle course. I rejoice that it is gone."

Historians attribute his evolving attitude toward equality to the liberalizing influences of his hero, Henry Clay, his college and law school professors, and his wife, Mallie, who had a deep distaste for slavery. When discussing his changed perspective, Harlan commented, "Let it be said that I am right rather than consistent."

Almost a century later, NAACP lead counsel Thurgood Marshall, inspired by John Marshall Harlan's written opinions, quoted his Plessy dissent in the argument to the Supreme Court against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, (1954).

* (Justice David Brewer didn't participate in this case)

Answer 2

Answer

When you read the statement in context, its meaning is abundantly clear: the Constitution is intended to protect all people equally and provide the same civil rights and protections without regard to race or ethnic heritage.

Explanation

In his dissenting opinion to Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896), the landmark US Supreme Court case that legally affirmed the practice of providing separate facilities (allegedly "separate but equal") for African-American and white people, Justice John Marshall Harlan I wrote:

"The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. 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."

When you read the statement in context, its meaning is abundantly clear: the Constitution is intended to protect all people equally and provide the same rights without regard to race or ethnic heritage.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were designed to end slavery and confer the rights of citizenship and all constitutional protections on African-Americans, preventing them from being subjugated to white society and treated like an inferior class of humans. Instead, the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy legitimized discriminatory laws like the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, effectively encouraging states and municipalities to pass Jim Crow laws that temporarily defeated the purpose of the new amendments.

Harlan correctly believed the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional and would lead to future problems, correctly predicting the violence and racism that followed:

"But it seems that we have yet, in some of the States, a dominant race -- a superior class of citizens, which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the States in which they respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the States are forbidden to abridge. Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. 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 as was enacted in Louisiana."

History proved him right.

For more information, see Related Questions, below.