"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 coloured 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 coloured race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument also assumes that social prejudice may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits and a voluntary consent of individuals."

Justice Henry Billings Brown, majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, United States Supreme Court, 18 May 1896. The case was brought by Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth Black, and had been arrested for sitting in a whites-only railway car in Louisiana. The ruling upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of 'separate but equal'.