Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste’ is a devastating exploration of American racial distinctions

By Steve Nathans-Kelly
In Plessy v. Ferguson, the landmark civil rights case whose 7-2 defeat in the Supreme Court codified the principle of “separate but equal” in United States law for 58 years, Albion Tourgée, the lead attorney bringing suit against Louisiana’s Separate Car Act, pursued a legal argument that seems curious today.
Rather than insisting that his client, Homer Plessy—a light-skinned, mixed-race, French-speaking Creole—deserved to sit in the ra