Opponents of racial affirmative action like to say that they favor an ideal of "colorblindness," i.e. the idea that the government should never ever be able to base its treatment of someone on a knowledge of their race. Affirmative action, the claim goes, violates this rule, which sounds very much like the very model of a rule against racial discrimination, every bit as much as Jim Crow laws did. Or, as Chief Justice John Roberts infamously put it, "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." And as a kind of supporting precedent for that idea, either in an actual legal-precedent context or just as rhetorical support from a hero of the civil rights movement, people on that side of that issue like to cite the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan from
Plessy v. Ferguson. Here are the passages that suggests a kind of color-blindness:
"In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights."
And:
"But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved."
And:
"They [the Reconstruction Amendments] declared, in legal effect, this court has further said, "that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States..."
And:
"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among our citizens."
That last bit is perhaps the most commonly cited, especially just the first clause. It certainly does sound like it supports a color-blindness standard.
