> There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. It is scarcely just to say that a colored citizen should not object to occupying a public coach assigned to his own race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he objecting, and ought never to cease objecting, to the proposition that citizens of the white and black race can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway.
- Justice Harlen, Plessy v Ferguson dissent [0], arguing against segregation.
There is only one time in American history when it was the official policy that everyone of a particular race (in particular regions of the country) be forcibly relocated to concentration camps; and that race was Japanese. Granted, there were periods of American history where the de-facto policy was essentially the same towards blacks.
Anti-Asian discrimination is the untold civil rights story of American history, and it never really stopped.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/163/537#writin...