Brown portrayed blacks as imagining themselves being dealt with unfairly, but at the same time referred to whites as the “dominant race” and added, “if one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.” Indeed, were white passengers forced to sit with blacks, their reputations would suffer. Whiteness, wrote Brown, was a form of “property,” and the railroad could be sued for devaluing it. Plessy, however, despite his skin color, was not white and thus not entitled to “the reputation of being a white man,” evidently worth more
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