This day in history

Before Rosa Parks, there was Homère Patris Plessy, who, 115 years ago today, was thrown off a train in Louisiana in 1892 for Sitting While Black. He took this case to the Supreme Court, who sadly upheld segregation by race. [Hat tip: IntLawGrrls]

Let's have a quick timeline:

• 1796 - George Washington leaves office (212 years ago)
  
• 1865 - Slavery formally abolished (143 years ago)
  
• 1892 - Supreme court upholds doctrine of separate but equal (112 years ago today)
  
• 1954 - A very famous case which reversed this decision (54 years ago)
  
• 2008 - Now we have a black president. (a tiny little bit in the future)
  

And things seem to move so slowly.

I've never been comfortable with how we define race. Plessy was "of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth African blood" (Plessy v Ferguson pg 538) -- why was this considered significant enough to be remarked on in a US Supreme Court decision? -- and yet legally (albeit mostly past now), administratively (the infamous race checkbox), and culturally we insist on only two options: White OR Black.

And it is still today as it was then, any "black blood" (painful to even write that), and you're Black. This was memorably bemoaned by Public Enemy in "Fear of a Black Planet":

Black man, black woman, black baby
White man, white woman, white baby
White man, black woman, black baby
Black man, white woman, black baby

Barack Obama brings this into some focus, doesn't he.

You can see how confused I am. I just don't get it. I suppose we'll survive, but in the mean time, you know, we do whatever we do to survive.