Plessy Vs. Ferguson: Religious Perspective

 Today I will be speaking on behalf of Homer Plessy, a seven-eighths white man who was arrested after seating himself in a whites-only car. As a man who was not entirely white it was said that he was in violation of the 1890 Louisiana Separate Car Law. This supported Jim Crow ideals with a "separate but equal" seating arrangement in which whites and blacks would be placed in separate cars of a train. Although these laws were in place, it can be argued that Louisiana's segregation law violated both the 13th Amendment's banning of slavery as well as the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. 

In addition to this, I believe that this was a violation of Homer Plessy's religious rights. The Bible teaches that humanity is that of both diversity and equality. According to (Genesis 1:26-28), we are all made equally in God's image. "The rich and the poor have this in common: The Lord made them both (Proverbs 22:2). "All are born under sin, have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Jesus spoke to the differences of good and evil, women and men, and different ethnicities. Although people may be, look, and act differently, it does not change that they are still human. Nor should it change how said individuals are treated. "All people are morally equal before the throne of God facing the law and His mercy. We all have equal responsibility to use what we have to the glory of God. Every human being is the object of the love of God (John 3:16). We were not created to judge each other; our final judgment will be determined by our creator. 

We need to stop challenging the idea of equality and instead embrace it. After all, that's what God intended for when he created us. It is important to recognize the differences in every person, but we need to be more careful about which differences we allow ourself to make an impression on. Inequality will always exist in our society and that is something that we have to accept. There are both controlled and uncontrolled differences that we allow to influence our actions and thoughts. Traits that we are born with, such as skin color, should not be used as a justified excuse to treat people differently. Would it be reasonable for us to judge people and treat them differently based off of eye color? No. This is exactly why the basis of judging someone by the color of their skin is completely ludicrous. 

Achieving total equality as a society is unrealistic. As humans, the only things that we can rely on being equal is the fact that we all live and we all die. Every other aspect of our lives is not going to be equal to one another. The Lord created everyone differently and chose the ones to be poor, rich, black, white, male female, etc. What's important is that we recognize the differences between inequality and diversity and use that to come to a more appropriate solution regarding the issues of segregation.