The Supreme Court yesterday (September 8, 2025) threatened to put a knife into the very heart of what gives this nation any claim even to aspire to exceptionalism by allowing race, ethnicity and language (accent!) to be sufficient cause to stop and question suspected violators of immigration laws. We inevitably fall short of our highest aspirations, yet we hold them as worthy goals. We take pride in being a nation of laws, while acknowledging that we sometimes fall short.

We have never been a nation where Lady Justice truly covered her eyes so as not to see race, class or religion but only the law. She always peeked but, and this is the point, she wasn’t supposed to, and we weren’t supposed to tolerate her peeking. We have never been truly color blind. We saw race. We knew that “driving while Black” could lead to an unwarranted stop, frisk or arrest. We knew that being Brown in a public place could get you into trouble. We knew that being identifiably Asian could lead to violence, persecution, incarceration and deportation—depending on which Asian you appeared to be and when.

Persecution (except in the Segregationist South) was not legal. It was often widespread but not legal. That has just changed, and the results will be devastating to all of us—minority or not.

There is a vast difference between traditions and folkways of intolerance and making it legal. It is one thing for an individual business to have a sign that says No Jews, Blacks, Asians, Irish or Dogs and have that policy manifest in the law. Illegal, but practiced, is bad; making it legal is far worse. We know because we have clear precedents in history.

In 19th-century Vienna, there was much anti-Semitism both personal and institutional. Though legally emancipated in 1867, Jews faced strong anti-Semitic backlash as their population grew from 6,200 in 1860 to 150,000 by 1900. Jews were restricted from education by strict quotas and even exclusion. They were kept in seperate neighborhoods. They were kept from an increasing number of professions, from the arts to academia. Their stores were picketed and vandalized, and they were labeled eternal enemies of the German people (in Austria!).

Dr. Karl Lueger, a renowned anti-Semite, was the Mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910. He took anti-Semitic customs, some dating back to Medieval times, and made them into laws. So, while Jews had suffered discrimination, and much of it was not illegal, making it legal was a disaster to the Jewish people in Vienna.

While upper-class successful Jews fared somewhat better than recent immigrant working-class escapees from Poland and Eastern Europe, even the most successful artists, musicians, scientists and philosophers suffered.

This persecution, from being only traditional, then legal and now illegal, still exists. When I was a student in Vienna in the ‘60s, Freud’s bust was displayed at the University of Vienna in a double cul-de-sac hidden from the “real Viennese” scholars. Psychiatry was known as a “Jewish Science”—not a real science. The great Vienna Philharmonic was 50% Nazi by 1938, and while Jews were “invited back” in 1945, today there are only two Jews. The legacy of de jure discrimination is lengthy.

The Supreme Court’s shadow docket’s ruling, unexplained but with withering dissents, allows perceived race, ethnicity, language and skin color to constitute sufficient cause to stop and interrogate a person. They have legalized stopping people for driving while Black, working while Brown and living while Asian. Maybe I shouldn’t worry because surely, they’d never extend it to the size and shape of a  nose.

Not since Korematsu, which legalized the arrest of ethnic Japanese, even American citizens, has the Supreme Court tortured our Constitution so. While the outrageous presidential immunity might lead to the replacement of democracy with the divine right of kings, it deals with only one position. This ill-considered ruling strikes at the heart of equal protection, the Fourth Amendment and our better angels that would counsel us to see individuals and not colors, races and ethnicities.
This government and its unholy-owned subsidiary, the Supreme Court, which so opposes seeing any race other than white singled out for advantage, is happy to find that race counts when thinning the herd. This does just what Lueger did and converts traditional oppression into legally supported oppression. This has not ended well in the past. Nor will it end well in the future.

Support our advertisers click an ad below.