272
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
I
The statutes and regulations at issue, as the Court indicates, were adopted by the political branches in response to an "unfortunate reality": "[t]he unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination against minority groups in this country." Ante, at 237 (lead opinion). The United States suffers from those lingering effects because, for most of our Nation's history, the idea that "we are just one race," ante, at 239 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), was not embraced. For generations, our lawmakers and judges were unprepared to say that there is in this land no superior race, no race inferior to any other. In Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), not only did this Court endorse the oppressive practice of race segregation, but even Justice Harlan, the advocate of a "color-blind" Constitution, stated:
"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." Id., at 559 (dissenting opinion).
Not until Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), which held unconstitutional Virginia's ban on interracial marriages, could one say with security that the Constitution and this Court would abide no measure "designed to maintain White Supremacy." Id., at 11.2
2 The Court, in 1955 and 1956, refused to rule on the constitutionality of antimiscegenation laws; it twice declined to accept appeals from the decree on which the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals relied in Loving. See Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80, 87 S. E. 2d 749, vacated and remanded, 350 U. S. 891 (1955), reinstated and aff'd, 197 Va. 734, 90 S. E. 2d 849, appeal dism'd, 350 U. S. 985 (1956). Naim expressed the state court's view of the legislative purpose served by the Virginia law: "to preserve the racial integrity of [Virginia's] citizens"; to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a
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